Reader’s letter This is a debate entry, written by an external contributor. The post expresses the writer’s views.
Helse Nord warns of a complete collapse in the specialist health service if action is not taken! There are 1,200 unfilled positions in Helse Nord. We hear stories about doctors who are hired and earn NOK 200,000 a week. We hear stories of hired nurses in public hospitals earning more than the Prime Minister; AND it is certainly deserved, because they cannot possibly do a worse job than Jonas Gahr Støre.
We see that the waiting lists for young people in the north who struggle with mental health problems are only increasing and increasing and are now alarmingly high. Within mental health care, priority is given to the sickest. The consequence is that all those who do not receive treatment become increasingly ill, and then the total number who get progressively worse increases until they are also seriously ill. The red flag should have been raised a long time ago!
The municipalities are given more and more responsibility for patients who are not ready for discharge, and in addition, a number of municipalities are struggling to recruit GPs. It’s a crisis! If in the future we are to have the same number of hands in relation to the current hospital structure in northern Norway, every third young person in northern Norway must take a health-related education, and in addition all of these must settle in the north. It is only in theory that this is possible! The demographic challenges are not just a northern Norwegian phenomenon, the same picture applies to the whole of Europe, but the gap between the number of older people and the number of younger people increases the further north you go.
Statistics Norway says that in 2035 we will lack 28,000 nurses and 15,000 health professionals.
THIS CRISIS IS NOT POSSIBLE TO GRANT US OUT OF!
It goes without saying that in the future we CANNOT have a hospital on every headland. The new hospital structures must also take into account that we live in a demanding part of the country where settlement patterns are scattered. Better follow-up services must be developed, better follow-up of pregnant women so that potentially difficult births can be admitted earlier to larger maternity wards, and the country must have a pre-hospital structure that is adapted to people’s settlement patterns.
This means that navel-gazing local politicians must look up, realize the realities, and help find good and sustainable solutions.
In 2019, the parliamentary faction was on a tour of the hospitals in Helgeland. There, the professional circles at ALL the hospitals said that the only right thing was a joint hospital. Of course they disagreed about the location!
When the faction asked the chief doctor at one hospital if you couldn’t get the best, i.e. one hospital, what would be the next best? The doctor leaned back, sighed, and then he said the wonderfully sensible and simple words: WHY DON’T WE MAKE THE BEST!!!
NOW THE PROGRESS PARTY MUST ONCE AGAIN SHOW THE WAY, AND SHOW ALL THE OTHER PARTIES THE WAY TO A COMMON HOSPITAL CENTRALLY LOCATED IN HELGELAND.
