Nurses from leasing companies have rejected the allegations of Berlin clinic managers. Employees from temporary employment agencies told the Tagesspiegel that they were outraged by the tenor from the hospitals. The reason for this is his research over the weekend, according to which individual leasing companies do not want their nursing staff in Berlin’s clinics to work on Covid-19 wards.
“My colleagues have been working on Covid-19 wards for months,” says Sven Rösler, managing director of “ICC Medical”, which places intensive care staff in hospitals. “Individual employees even take care of five, six, sometimes seven Covid-19 patients per shift.” The accusation that people are holding back in the fight against the corona virus is wrong.
In particular, the state-owned Vivantes clinics were affected by leasing companies that do not want their staff to be deployed on Covid 19 stations. The Vivantes board supports Health Senator Dilek Kalayci (SPD), who wants to stop leasing in care through a Federal Council initiative.
“The nursing staff feel left alone – especially the leasing staff,” says recruiter Rösler. The ICC people are currently being booked for Covid-19 wards, but are not given the same protection as the permanent staff in all clinics. Rösler points out that often only in-house employees are tested without any problems, and in some stations the masks are scarce for temporary and temporary workers.
Any bonuses that the employees of the state-owned Vivantes clinics and Charité received in the first wave are given to leasing nurses. ICC Medical has more than 100 employees, 90 of whom are trained intensive care staff. “We are fully booked and often work more overtime than our colleagues in the hospitals.”
In addition, says Rösler, ten employees are in quarantine and three have tested positive for Sars-Cov-2. Other employees drive home crying after their shifts, reports Rösler, from exhaustion, sometimes from anger.
The pressure on the clinics, especially the maximum care providers, has increased massively in the past few weeks. More and more Covid-19 patients are facing the shortage of personnel, while the number of accidents and everyday ailments has hardly decreased despite the (initially soft) lockdowns.
Not only ICC Medical managing director Rösler fears: A ban on leasing in nursing care, as demanded by Senator Kalayci, hospital director and some experts, will lead to an even greater nursing emergency. In fact, it is largely undisputed that nurses from clinics and homes are switching to leasing companies because they often have better influence over the rigid working hours there. In addition, higher wages are paid in a leasing company. In the past 20 years, more than 100,000 trained nurses across Germany have left the industry completely.
According to various sources, two percent of nurses in German clinics are provided by leasing companies, in Berlin the proportion is likely to be higher. Individual Vivantes stations need temporary workers for more than ten percent of their hospital beds.
