Should young people and retirees be forced to work in health care?

Even a more efficient organization, foreign workers and care robots will not be enough to stop the staffing shortage in healthcare. If we are not careful, soon there will be no one to take care of us.

Because she cannot find a home nurse who can visit her after a serious operation, the woman in her 60s is forced to stay in hospital a little longer. At a residential care centre, management asks a man if he can take his mother into his home temporarily. Due to a shortage of healthcare professionals, her department was closed. The patient is told that hip surgery should be postponed. Not because the surgeon is sick, but because there are not enough nurses.

Here and there, patients are already suffering from a lack of medical personnel. Since the number of people with chronic diseases is increasing and the number of elderly has not yet reached full speed, we are inevitably heading towards a health care crisis. However, surprisingly few people are concerned about this.

This does not mean that solutions are not being thought of. It is regularly suggested that healthcare will have to be organized differently in the future.

In times of shortage, for example, it is incomprehensible that the same street is sometimes served by up to five competing home nursing services. It is also not sustainable (nor necessary) to help all residents in a residential care center shower or bathe before 10 every day.

All kinds of technological aids, from automatic medication dispensers to sensor-equipped incontinence pads, can save time. Although, of course, the warm care we all crave won't come from a care robot.

Informal care

In addition, it is increasingly pointed out that caring for the sick and elderly is the responsibility of all of us. This is correct.

Today, many people are already receiving informal care. They are taking care of their son who has a disability but has not yet received a single euro from his personal budget. They spend many hours a week providing informal care to a partner with dementia or a mother suffering from a number of age-related illnesses.

But at a time when more people are suffering from burnout and we are all having to work longer, it is a bit naive to think that informal care can be dramatically expanded.

Even if we do everything we can to make health care work better, we still have to look for more nurses, health care professionals, and other health care workers.

“Can't we just send them out?” Then it is said. However, it is not always easy to deploy healthcare staff who do not (yet) speak the language and do not know the customs of the average Belgian citizen. If we bring health care workers from everywhere here, we'll burden their nation with one of their own, too Taking care of the brain drain on me. Not very elegant, of course.

more attractive

One way or another, we will have to hire more healthcare workers in our country. This can only be achieved by reducing the workload, giving such jobs greater prestige and pay, and making training courses more attractive.

Today, young people who excel in studies are still asked to aim higher than nursing or occupational therapy. In secondary school, many students end up in care again because they got a B or C in another course. The fact that a study by the Professional Federation of Healthcare Professionals (BEFEZO) shows that 70 percent of teachers believe that students who have followed such a trend are not prepared for the job market does not exactly help.

To make healthcare courses – from vocational education to HBO5 to bachelor's degrees – more desirable, the bar will need to be raised a bit in some areas. If beginners come to the workplace armed with the right expectations, there will be less chance of them eventually leaving.

If we fail to attract more people into the care profession, in the long term there are only two options left: leave those in need of care (partly) to their fate or force people into care work one way or another.

Earlier this week, two professors wrote an op-ed the time – Encouraging retirees as much as possible to care for the elderly. In return, they will receive care points that they can later convert into care for themselves.

I recently had the opportunity to join a European research institution that is developing concrete proposals for citizen healthcare service delivery where young people have to work in the healthcare sector for a few months to a year after their training. In this way, staff shortages can actually be limited. But then we are taken care of by people who don't feel like it at all. Maybe I'd rather choose this care robot.