Before the corona pandemic turned the world upside down, hospitals braced themselves every year for the flu season. They did this by planning more care during those foreseeable peak moments. “But those were very short periods,” notes Cloet. “After corona, in combination with the staff loss, it is now difficult.”
Because staff loss is – in addition to corona and the flu – a third factor that is now putting pressure on healthcare: after the two tough corona years, hospitals are faced with a major staff loss. “There was a 10 percent dropout in early January, peaking at 15 percent by early February,” says Margot Cloet. “At the moment the dropout rate is around 12 percent, which is still high, and in recent weeks we have seen an upward trend again.”
“The fact that we constantly have to miss more than 1 in 10 employees makes it very difficult. You work in shifts, 7 days a week, 24 hours a day… That means that we now have to postpone care because we don’t have enough people available to take care of the people who have to undergo surgery.”
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