Nurses demand: "Vaccination for all or none"

Created: 01/22/2022, 06:00

By: Uta Künkler

Doctor vaccinates doctor: From March 15, all healthcare workers must be immunized against corona.

This affects every employee in the facility - the nurse as well as the kitchen worker.

Symbo Every tenth person is currently unvaccinated There is a lack of skilled workers at all ends © Sven Hoppe/dpa

In the district of Erding, criticism of the obligation to vaccinate in the healthcare system from March 15 is hailing.

The clinic, homes and nursing services fear serious staffing problems.

District

– While there is currently a heated discussion as to whether vaccination against the corona virus should be compulsory, it has already been decided for part of the population: from March 15, healthcare workers will have to prove that they are fully vaccinated or have recovered. Otherwise they may lose their jobs. This presents the Erding Clinic, nursing homes and outpatient nursing services in the district with considerable personnel problems. Experts fear a wave of layoffs.

Not only doctors and nursing staff are affected by the vaccination requirement.

Caretakers, cleaning staff, kitchen staff and other employees in clinics, nursing homes etc. must also be fully immunized.

The institutions are currently inquiring about the status of their employees.

Anyone who has not been vaccinated by mid-March must be reported to the health department.

This should then examine the individual case and can pronounce an employment ban.

The vaccination requirement, which is limited to the healthcare sector, "weakens an area in which there is already maximum tension," criticizes Peter Haile, Managing Director of Pflegestern Seniorenservice gGmbH, which operates nursing homes in Finsing and Oberding. Haile claims to be a big proponent of vaccination itself. A selective obligation only for the healthcare system, however, is “a disaster” for him.

Haile estimates that five to ten percent of the nursing star employees are still unvaccinated. Some of them have already made it clear that they will not be swayed by the forthcoming vaccination requirement, he says. "They have signaled that they will probably leave then." They are migrating to other areas, such as gastronomy. "It will affect the whole industry," predicts Haile, who is a board member of the care association BPA in Bavaria. "We will permanently lose strength" - and that in a time of great shortage anyway.

The rate at Klinikum Erding is similar.

According to clinic director Dr.

Dirk Last about 90 percent completely immunized against Corona.

However, the clinic is confident that the number of vaccinated people will be increased by mid-March.

Last hopes that the impending loss of employees will be limited "to a few exceptions that are therefore unnecessary in these cases".

In general, when there is doubt, it is not easy to fill vacancies, "because there is a blatant shortage of staff in all areas in the entire hospital system," emphasizes Last.

Lisa Empl, head of the outpatient care service at Caritas in Erding, issues the same warning: “There are no nurses like sand by the sea.” The loss of employees “would exacerbate the nursing shortage in our facility.

In concrete terms, this would mean that, in the worst case, we would be able to care for fewer patients.”

The nursing sector has long been plagued by staff shortages.

The pandemic has been exacerbating this development through quarantine and sick leave for months.

Empl fears that if other skilled workers are absent due to a possible ban on working, there could be a serious supply shortage.

There are certainly reasons for mandatory vaccination in the healthcare system, such as protecting the particularly vulnerable groups of sick and elderly people, says the head of the nursing service.

But that was "too short-sighted" and ultimately harms the health care system and patient care.

The protection of vulnerable groups is the task of the entire population.

“If there is already a compulsory vaccination, there should be one for everyone and not for individual professional groups.” Haile also says: “Compulsory vaccination for everyone or for none.”

Nurses deserve the greatest appreciation for what they do for society every day, says Empl.

But instead “the burden of fighting the pandemic is shifted to individual professional groups”.

Haile agrees.

His employees did not feel applauded, but "again disadvantaged" and abused as a spearhead.

For him, the signal sent by the partial vaccination requirement formulated in the latest version of the Infection Protection Act is nothing more than “a social catastrophe”.