After winning the state election, the state government must be measured against the promises of the SPD election program.
During the election campaign, the SPD campaigned with the promise that "Good care and health will be a central concern of an SPD-led state government with 4,000 additional nursing staff.”
A promise that cannot be kept. According to calculations by the German Nursing Council, around 3,200 nursing staff in Saarland will retire in the next 5 years. Together with the additional positions, approximately 7,000 people would need to be added.
According to Helmut Isringhaus, deputy state chairman of the FDP-Saar: "Legal measures such as minimum staffing levels in hospitals will not attract a single additional nursing staff to the profession. Only good working conditions for this important job will lead to more people undertaking training or experienced staff wanting to return to the profession.
Reports like the one from Sulzbach, where nurses were to be dismissed because they could not prevent a patient from leaving a large surgical ward, are devastating for the image of the profession and confirm my impression that some hospital operators and their management are partly responsible for the current nursing shortage due to years of personnel mismanagement and lack of employee appreciation."
Isringhaus also points out that the lack of funding for hospitals in the past is the second pillar of causes for the current nursing shortage. The Nursing Staff Strengthening Act (PPSG) will only take effect in the medium term.
„I view with great suspicion the plan to establish a 'Nursing Unit' within the Ministry of Labor, Social Affairs, Women and Health to develop a concept on how to address the nursing shortage. This sounds like more cumbersome bureaucracy. Given the acute situation in hospitals and outpatient care, swift measures concerning working conditions and training are necessary. Training nursing assistants does not solve the problem,“ said Deputy State Chairman Helmut Isringhaus.
