The decision-makers of wellbeing services counties have a great responsibility for the care and treatment of the region’s residents. And that is why they have to hold on to educated, competent staff.
Labour shortage is not solved by reducing competence
Care assistants and apprentices are used to patch up the nurse shortage, but they do not have the competence to perform the duties of practical nurses. Lack of appropriate training endangers client and patient safety. Malpractice cases cause human suffering and end up increasing the sector’s costs.
The decision-makers do not seem to understand the demands of nursing work. Round-the-clock care, service housing and home care are all highly demanding and require strong professional competence. The elderly often have multiple health conditions, but will not be accepted into service housing until the situation has become very difficult. There is nothing light about this job!
Respect for nursing work decreasing
Looser qualification criteria reflect a serious issue: nursing work is not respected. The belief that ‘anyone can provide care’ will destroy the attractiveness of the field. When the competence level is decreased, there will be fewer qualified professionals, which in turn will increase the burden of those still remaining in the field.
Medication safety and emergency situations require trained personnel
Medication duties cannot be allocated to untrained workers. Even if a nurse with a medication licence is distributing the medication, who will monitor its effects when they are not present? Quick training sessions do not provide care assistants with sufficient competence, and any errors in medication may lead to the patient’s condition deteriorating and emergency service capacity becoming overrun.
Lack of training may also be fatal in an emergency. Fluctuation in level of consciousness may be a sign of a serious issue, but the ability to detect these incidents takes more than a brief training session. This could lead to delayed treatment, unnecessary ambulance calls and even serious complications.
Language barrier may compromise care
Interaction and communication is the basis of all care work. If a nurse does not know Finnish or Swedish well enough, this is reflected negatively in record keeping and customer communications. According to the Patient Insurance Centre, more than half of adverse events could have been avoided with better record keeping and communication.
Making compromises in qualification criteria does not solve this issue, but only makes it worse. In treatment and care, you cannot take shortcuts. We need reason, not useless quick fixes!
