When the rules on 24-hour rest came into force last autumn, ambulance nurses resigned, there were difficulties in recruiting new staff and ambulances were left standing at night. Something that led to concern among residents around the county.
But now that a new autumn awaits, Lenita Petersson feels calm because they have solutions in place to be able to staff the ambulances.
But she does not want to go into what solutions are involved, as it will later be negotiated with the union. However, she can say that the ambulances will be rolling around the clock.
Resigned – but came back
– I have no worries about autumn and not about winter or the coming year either. We have people who have come back to the business again and it’s fun.
In order to cope with the summer staffing, Region Kalmar County applied for an exemption from the rules for 24-hour rest for 13 ambulance stations and on-call duty at the women’s clinic at Västervik Hospital.
Not clear in Virserum
In Vimmerby, Hultsfred and Virserum, the region wanted a twelve-month exemption but was refused.
And at the ambulance in Virserum, the staffing is still not resolved.
– We currently do not manage to staff there around the clock, but the goal is to do so, but it is a process with the recruitment. It takes time, says Lenita Petersson.
Region Kronoberg: “In phase”
In the Kronoberg Region, the dispensaries from the summer expired on August 18, and even there the scrapped dispensaries have not caused problems:
– We are in a phase in terms of staffing, says Fredrik Dahlberg, operations manager for the ambulance service.
He also emphasizes that the reason why a waiver was needed this summer was because the emergency department in Ljungby was not open 24 hours a day.
This means the rules for 24-hour rest
The changes came into force on 1 October 2023 and mean that a work shift must be followed by time off.
The employee must have 11 hours of continuous rest in each 24-hour period.
This means that the possibility of working an on-call shift after a work shift is limited.