Opinions This is a debate post. The post expresses the writer’s views.
This is an open anonymous reader post from an employee in home care in Halden municipality to the management:
There is talk here of reorganizing home nursing once again, as you think that this is the way to solve the financial situation in the health sector.
Once again, you are going to put employees in a situation where they feel insecure, the feeling of being pawns in one of your houses.
You spend a lot of money hiring consultants to help you see how to save, but talking to us who actually work on the floor and can give you a more realistic measure, you completely overlook that.
I have worked in home nursing since 2012, and see a large increase in the number of patients in addiction and psychiatry, and elderly people with severe dementia and extensive support needs. These are areas that create challenges for employees and where home nursing often falls short as we lack the right expertise and enough resources.
We are exposed to threats and have to enter environments that expose us to risk. This is something we face every single day. There must be an increase in face-to-face time, but then they must also remove everything that has nothing to do with patients, such as the time we spend on cars, among other things.
In all my years, I have not yet experienced having to sit on permanent duty with patients where it is inadvisable to leave them alone at home, until now. For over a week, we have had to have a permanent guard at a home resident who could not be alone at home without supervision as there are no places to move up. This costs the municipality and home nursing a lot, and the municipality also loses money as this is a service for which nothing is paid.
Perhaps you need to realize that we need more nursing home places and that everything should not be covered by home nursing?
Don’t you really think we want to stay within budget too?
We know that as soon as the budget is exceeded, you are on us right away to find ways for us to work even faster. But the budget that you have set up against the expectations you have for home care is completely unrealistic as it is now.
Many lose motivation and desire to continue in a workplace where changes are constantly being made and which will create unpredictability and frustration among the employees. This affects the working environment to a large extent. If things continue like this, we will lose many good employees, some of whom will be able to result in us lacking people and the right professional skills. In the long term, this cannot be covered, and we again have to resort to, among other things, staffing agencies and overtime. And then we start talking costs.
You have to start seeing us, not just the numbers. Play on teams with us, not just poets. We are the ones at the front, we are the ones who must perform the statutory services in a good and responsible manner.
Remember that we who work are also human.
