Every third person who works in healthcare cannot bear to work full-time – even though they want to.
This is shown by a new survey from the Swedish Medical Association published today.
– Swedish healthcare will collapse if this is allowed to continue, says Sinevo Ribeiro, union chairman of the Swedish Healthcare Association.
– It’s about working around the clock, all year round, every day of the year. In a rotation that is tiring in itself, with a high workload, says Cineva Ribeirov, union president of the healthcare union in Nyhetsmorgon.
When healthcare professionals have set a schedule, uncomfortable working hours often increase by 30%, says Ribeirov. Many in the workforce have received more nights, weekends and evenings per working week. This in turn leads to not being able to piece together the puzzle of life.
“Couldn’t work 100%”
Eli Gull is a nurse herself who has been forced to reduce her working hours, even though she wants to work full time. Gull has been working as a nurse for four years and after three months of full-time work, she was forced to reduce her working hours to get her personal life together and get the recovery she needed to cope.
– I realized that it was not possible to work 100%. Partly because I had no recovery time. And when you were off work, you needed to rest and sleep in order to be able to work the next day.
According to Elli Gull, many part-time workers are forced into overtime.
– So you will be called up anyway?
– Yes, this year alone I have worked 170 hours of overtime. Although I have not chosen to work full-time.
It is not sustainable in the long run, she explains in Nyhetsmorgon.
“Salary is affected”
– The salary is affected, the living wage is affected and the pensions in the long term. Besides that, the patients do not get the care they should have, Cineva Ribeirov says and continues “if everyone who works part-time were to increase their working hours, we would get 8,000 more of our four professions in Swedish healthcare. There are quite a lot of staff who would get up and work. People die of cancer today because they don’t get treatment. The population will suffer, she continues.
“Swedish healthcare will collapse if this is allowed to continue”
Cineva Ribeirov says many of her colleagues haven’t had a summer vacation in years. The employer buys out the holiday during the summer.
– We have overtime that is only increasing. The number of illnesses is rising. Swedish healthcare will collapse if it continues.
– What do you hope the results will lead to?
– I hope that we now sit down together with the employer; what can we do about the overtime? How can we get more people to work full-time? Either you have to cut back on care places or you have to make sure that younger people dare to apply for these professions.
– It is a good challenge to make healthcare an attractive workplace, where you listen to the staff who work, says Eli Gull.