1. How big is the problem?
Healthcare is currently one of the sectors with the largest staff shortage: there are 61,000 vacancies, it appeared this week. new numbers† In 2019, so before corona, employers in care already indicated that 7 out of 10 vacancies are difficult to fulfill. High work pressure, bureaucracy, poor career opportunities and working hours were already common complaints and corona has come over again.
The pressure on healthcare has been enormous over the past two years, and absenteeism has been sky high† Some of the healthcare staff are still struggling with lung covid. All in all, the shortage in healthcare is a major problem at the moment. Of course there are differences by industry and region, but the consequences of the staff shortage are felt almost everywhere.
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2. Will there still be sufficient care in the future?
The Netherlands is aging rapidly, and that has major consequences. Care economist Marcel Canoy calls it ‘double ageing’. Because more and more people are 65 years or older, the group of people in need of care is increasing and there are fewer people who work.
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In 1990 about 13 percent of the population was older than 65, in 2020 that had already risen to about 20 percent. Population projections show that this number will only increase: in 2040 an estimated 26 percent of the population will be over 65, of which a third will be older than 80 years. There will then be only two people of working age for every person over 65.
This is what the population will look like in 2040:
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This aging of the population is immediately noticeable in healthcare. “In the nursing and care sector, the staff shortage has almost tripled in 10 years”, the Council for Public Health & Society writes today. Sufficient care is therefore certainly not a matter of course. According to the Council, if we want to maintain the level of care, then ‘a fundamental change’ is needed in how we organize care.
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3. Are there solutions?
Sure, but then the care would have to be classified differently, says RVS. According to the council, not everything needs to be solved by a care worker, but care institutions will have to work together with, for example, experts by experience, volunteers or carers in paid employment. They can perform tasks that are now performed by healthcare workers.
Voluntary care and professional care would then work together much more closely. Together with the care organization, a care plan can then be looked at, and the tasks can then be divided. In order to achieve this, the strict regulations must be released, says RVS. And to motivate people, compensation such as neighborhood budgets or extended leave will have to be compensated.
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4. And if that doesn’t work?
Then, according to the council, we can recruit workers from abroad or, a more radical solution, introduce a duty of care or social service. Care economist Marcel Canoy does not like the latter. “Many Dutch people will not warm to that,” he says.
Canoy also says we could do more as a community. “Building a community, for example,” advises Canoy. “Suppose an elderly person is lonely and needs help with small things and asks a care worker for that. You can prevent that request for help by, for example, setting up evenings with social activities. For example, a card evening for everyone.”
“There are many elderly people who are able to walk and want to help others. By bringing them together you get fewer care questions associated with loneliness and fewer care questions are placed with professional organizations in the first place.”
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In addition, Canoy advises to take a good look at the interpretation of the profession of, for example, nurses. “90 percent of those employees are women, a large majority of whom work part-time. We know that if 20 percent of them work an extra five hours, the problem is largely solved.”
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5. Does every Dutch person have to deal with this staff shortage?
“Yes,” says Fleur Kusters of MantelzorgNL. “More people will have to start taking care of people in their environment or you will find that friends or relatives are taking care of and therefore have no time for other things.”
According to Kusters, if we as a society ask to organize care tasks more ourselves, we must help the ‘carers’ better, for example by supporting them financially, by making more informal homes possible and by arranging that a carer can also take time off. “If you ask more from informal caregivers, you have to make sure you give them support. In addition, we have to think about who will fill the gaps in the economy if employees can work less because they have to care.”
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