Retirement and nursing homes
in the facilities too. Psychiatric disorders are very prevalent among the
residents of homes. Dementia, depression and anxiety disorders are very
widespread. Scientific studies in the area of long-term care showed that
multidisciplinary intervention in the care of these persons is the most effective
solution. Collaboration between doctors, care specialists and other therapeutic
professionals is thus critical. From the NPM’s point of the view, inadequately
coordinated therapy strategies and care planning equally endanger treatment
and achieving care (quality) objectives.
In addition to awareness for the necessity of interdisciplinary cooperation,
retirement and nursing homes require the appropriate structures and
resources to ensure that this can actually be implemented and supported.
These structures can be joint interdisciplinary case reviews, for example, joint
meetings with the relatives, or common electronic documentation. Training
nursing teams in the field of mental health is crucial to understanding the
illness and supporting the residents.
High demand for
qualified nursing staff
The health care sector, homes and service providers have to prepare for growing
complexity and increasingly specialised demands for nursing and care in any
case. Care providers will also have to assume more of the routine medical tasks.
According to current estimates from the Austrian Healthcare and Nursing
Association (Österreichischer Gesundheits- und Krankenpflegeverband), in
2030 there will not only be an insufficient number of doctors but some 30,000
vacant positions for qualified nursing staff.
The disparity between increasing demands and the actual human resources
available in institutions was observed by all of the commissions. The new
health care profession register will be set up from the middle of 2018. 120,000
employees working in the health care and nursing professions as well as in
higher technical medical services and 10,000 graduates every year will be
entered in this register with their respective advanced and further training.
Entry in the register is the condition for working in the profession. Registration
will not only support administration in the future, it should also help the
regional health care planners to detect gaps. This is very much appreciated
by the NPM.
Findings from staff
interviews
26
In meetings with the commissions, nursing staff often claim to suffer under
tight time constraints, extreme workloads, mental and physical stress,
unfavourable work atmosphere, rigid hierarchies or constantly changing work
rosters. They also concede that, due to stress, certain actions or the failure to
act are accepted, which is not compatible with their professional ethics. Some
even consider leaving the profession earlier than planned. Clearly, there is a
relation between the qualification and the quality of nursing intervention.
Some but not all of the structural deficits and incidences of structural violence
highlighted by the NPM in previous years are linked to outdated “minimum
staffing ratios” that represent de facto maximum staffing limits. They reinforce
a perception of nursing that does not do justice to the UN Convention on
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