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Status: 09/02/2022 05:02
Caring for the sick and the elderly is hard work for little money. More and more nurses are changing jobs, and there are hardly any trainees. Other countries do it better – he shows how idea importPodcast the daily News.
Even the applause during the pandemic hasn’t changed anything: Nursing staff in Germany are completely overworked. They don’t feel adequately appreciated and paid. The one-time bonus payments were also little consolation. After all, since September, nursing homes nationwide have had to pay according to collective agreements – that means at least a little more money for many employees.
An important step because, as a study from 2020 showed, around 65 percent of nurses find that they are not paid enough for their work. This scares not only young people who are interested in the profession, but also those who are already working as caregivers. Germany is facing a real nursing crisis: it is estimated that around half a million nursing staff could be missing by 2030.
How you can prevent this and how care can remain affordable for those in need of care – that’s what the new episode of “Ideas Import”, the foreign podcast of the daily News.
How can care get better?
9/2/2022 5:00 am
Opportunities for advancement in the USA
The land of “unlimited opportunities” has lost much of its perceived luster in recent years and the health system has also come under much criticism. But it’s worth it for nurses in the USA: so-called “registered nurses”, the US counterpart to registered nurses, earn up to $80,000 a year there – sums that professional colleagues in Germany can only dream of.
The system is also more permeable: Anyone who starts as a simple assistant trained on the care bed can continue to gain further qualifications through courses of study. This not only brings with it a higher income, but also more and more skills. Anyone who finally qualifies as a “nurse practitioner” can even carry out quasi-GP activities and open their own practice.
The downside, however, is the horrendous tuition fees and sometimes too little practice in the courses. In some cases, this can even be life-threatening if illnesses are not recognized by the nurse and doctors are consulted too late.
Care without co-payment in Denmark
Denmark has found a solution to a challenge that Germany also has to meet: the wage increases for nursing staff in Germany are already causing a sharp increase in the personal contribution of those in need of care. They either pay for it themselves or their relatives are asked to pay.
In Denmark, however, care is financed by taxes, not by care insurance. Since the 1970s there has been a national pension, the so-called “folkepension”, which covers all the necessary costs for accommodation, electricity and meals. From the age of 75, those insured in Denmark are then entitled to a preventive home visit to check whether they need support. And: If possible, they are cared for in their own four walls – even if that means that nursing staff visits several times a day.
Of course, this means that taxes in Denmark are higher than in Germany. And Denmark is also struggling with problems with young people: On the one hand, society is aging – so too few people pay the taxes that more and more older people are claiming for their care. At the same time, too few young people are coming into the nursing professions, even if they are better paid there than in Germany.
They tell more about how the USA and Denmark deal with the topic of care and what Germany can perhaps learn from it ARD correspondents Julia Kastein and Sofie Donges in “Import of Ideas”.
Search for ideas in the tagesschau podcast
For many questions that arise again and again in everyday life, there are guaranteed to be good ideas, possible role models and solutions somewhere in the world: How better to deal with sharply rising energy prices? What to do to eat healthier? Why do people in other countries sometimes live longer?
The foreign podcast daily News searches and finds them – together with the correspondents in the 30 foreign studios of the ARD. “Import of Ideas” aims to broaden one’s horizons and provide fresh ideas for new input in political and social debates.
“Import of Ideas” has been published every second Friday since April 22, 2022. You can listen to the podcast anytime at home or on the go on your smartphone – every second Friday morning you will find a new episode on our website, in which ARD audio library and on numerous other podcast platforms.