Almost 10 thousand nurses disappeared from Hungarian hospitals!

Mostly hospitals in Budapest struggle with the shortage of nurses, and despite measures taken by the government, the problem is far from being solved. Nurse managers say that the shortage could only be reduced by higher wages, scholarships, introducing an employee benefit program and by the re-employment of pensioners.

Instead of the needed growth, the number of nurses decreases

At present, more and more hospitals hire nurses, scrub nurses and surgeon’s mates from employment agencies – Magyar Nemzet reported. For example, the director of Péterfy Hospital in the 7th district, Antal Sásdi, said to the daily that there is a significant shortage of professionals at the department of traumatology. There, they would need 22 people, but they only have 14, and they hire 8 of them from an employment agency. Furthermore, the director added that in the chronic care unit, they have only one nurse for the night shift at a department with 60-70 beds.

Andrea Ficzere, head of the Hungarian Hospital Association, said that despite government efforts, there are not enough nurses in the hospitals. Hanna Páva, deputy director of the National Institute for Health Services, added that there are 108 thousand nurses in the Hungarian health care system. However, their number

decreased by 9,000 between just 2013 and 2018, 

and most of the experienced professionals above 35 left the hospitals. Furthermore, even though more than 50 pc of the nurses graduated in the 1980s and 1990s work in their profession, this rate is only 33 pc in the case of the 2000-2009 generation, and 42 pc among those who finished school between 2010 and 2017. The rest never worked in their profession or already changed their career.

Without more money, a solution is hard to imagine

According to Ms Páva, the shortage of nurses having a secondary education degree and taking care directly of the patients is even more significant. In this category, there were 3,300 open positions in 2017 which number rose to 3,800 by 2018. If nothing happens, there will be 5,800 unfilled positions because of the many retiring nurses by 2021. Apart from Budapest,

the lack of nurses is considerable in Heves, Nógrád and Zala counties as well.

According to Hanna Páva, the introduction of successful scholarships is not enough; further measures have to be taken in order to solve the problem. The head of the Chamber of Hungarian Health Care Professionals added that, at the moment,

32 pc of Hungarian nurses are more than 51 years old, and an additional 35 pc is above 40.

According to a survey conducted by the chamber, the lack of nurses affects every Hungarian hospital. In order to ease the problem, nurses have to work longer hours, and managers have to hire nurses from employment agencies. Nurse managers say that the shortage could only be reduced by higher wages, scholarships, introducing an employee benefit program, and by the re-employment of pensioners.

As we already reported, Hungary struggles a lot with

labour shortage which affects almost every sector of the economy.

In fact, the most problematic sectors are public transport and service, tourism and IT. However, the issue also affects the public sector greatly. For example, a severe shortage of specialised teachers is present throughout Hungary, and in rural areas, more than a third of full-time jobs have not been filled. To make matters worse, even the shortage of doctors and nurses is getting worse.

Source: Magyar Nemzet