Kagoshima Municipal Hospital’s bed occupancy rate up to 70% due to mass retirement of nurses[04/04 20:02]
It turned out that Kagoshima City Hospital will reduce the occupancy rate of general inpatient beds to a maximum of 70% from this month. Non-urgent surgeries may be postponed.
Kagoshima Municipal Hospital is one of the prefecture’s core hospitals, providing emergency and perinatal care in addition to internal medicine and surgery. The number of beds is 574, which is second only to Kagoshima University Hospital.
According to an interview with a hospital, the occupancy rate of inpatient beds will be reduced to a maximum of 70% from this month. It is expected that the occupancy rate will be about the same as last summer when the hospital beds were tight during the peak of the new corona, and “There is a possibility that non-urgent surgeries may be postponed.”
In the background is the retirement of nurses, and in the past few years there were about 50 people, but last year there were about 70 people. Hospitals believe that one of the factors is the harsh working environment due to the corona crisis that can be seen in various places.
(Kagoshima Municipal Hospital Masakazu Niiho, Secretary General) “The retirement of such a large number of nurses is a very painful place. For the first time, we will continue to accept urgent patients.”
The hospital says it was able to hire “almost the same number of nurses as retirees,” but because several months of training are required, the number of beds will remain limited until around June.
Starting this fiscal year, the hospital plans to set up a “tutor system” to prevent nurses from retiring, and to promote initiatives such as asking senior nurses to listen to their concerns.
