Swedish healthcare faces a critical staffing shortage, with nurses like Jessica Eek working 17-hour shifts. Eek highlights the risks to patient care and calls for increased funding to address the crisis.
Swedish Healthcare Crisis: Nurses Endure 17-Hour Shifts Amid Staffing Shortages
Swedish Healthcare Crisis: Nurses Endure 17-Hour Shifts Amid Staffing Shortages
Reports of understaffing and lack of space have plagued Swedish healthcare this summer. Intensive care nurse Jessica Eek warns of the dire consequences.
"17.5 hours of intensive care straight—would you want it to be your child I was taking care of?" she writes on Facebook.
Throughout the summer, healthcare has sounded alarms about insufficient staffing across the country, including only one ambulance on duty in Stockholm city.
Jessica Eek, an intensive care nurse at Linköping University Hospital and a representative for the Left Party, shares her experience in a Facebook post.
"17.5 hours of intensive care, straight. Would you want it to be your child I was taking care of? Your sister, your father? Would you want to be on the road when I drive home?" she writes in the post.
"We don't account for people getting sick even in the summer. It's extra shifts, overtime, and a constant expectation to work more," she tells Expressen.
"A Constant Stress"
Jessica Eek estimates that there are at least ten such overtime shifts a week within her team, and most nurses are forced to work double shifts at least once a week.
"It's a constant stress and worry about not being able to cope or missing something important. Meeting critically ill patients and their relatives in crisis during long shifts requires a lot, and it's challenging to be empathetic and understanding when you're exhausted," she says.
She argues that understaffing also affects the quality of care.
"Fewer care places, especially for enhanced monitoring, create significant pressure on intensive care. This leads to more patient transfers and rapid adjustments where patients have to change departments," she says.
More Funding Needed
Jessica Eek emphasizes that healthcare is a crucial part of society's defense and should therefore be prioritized equally.
"The state must allocate more funds. Despite experiences from the pandemic, we have not strengthened resilience, instead putting both patients' and staff's lives at risk. We have a massive turnover of nurses, yet we don't invest in retaining them in the profession, allowing them to burn out. We let them sit and cry in stairwells and struggle through double shifts—even though they are the foundation of our defense."
Region Östergötland allocates the largest portion of its costs to healthcare. Is more money still needed?
"Just because it's the largest cost doesn't mean the resources are sufficient. Healthcare costs more today because we do more and live longer. It's unrealistic not to want to pay for modern healthcare. Of course, we can cut administration, but it will never solve the major economic problem."