Press­re­lease Demo­cra­tic Doc­tors 24.02.2023

Ever­yo­ne wants to pro­fit from the big busi­ness with the resour­ce of skil­led workers.

“Ins­tead of see­ing health workers pri­ma­ri­ly as a resour­ce that can be exploi­ted, expor­ted and impor­ted, we see them as acti­ve play­ers in the pro­vi­si­on of health care to the popu­la­ti­on. They can only play this role in a health sys­tem whe­re the focus is not on pro­fit inte­rests but on their work for health care,” says Karen Span­nen­krebs, a vdää* spea­k­er on the topic of health pro­fes­sio­nal recruit­ment.

Dif­fe­rent reasons lead peo­p­le to emi­gra­te to Ger­ma­ny to work in the local health sys­tem, inclu­ding com­pa­ra­tively hig­her wages or even employ­ment in their lear­ned pro­fes­si­on. Unfort­u­na­te­ly, the rea­li­ty of recrui­ting and working in Ger­ma­ny is often far from what they were pro­mi­sed. It is not uncom­mon for the pro­fes­sio­nals them­sel­ves to have to dig deep into their pockets for visas, copies, lan­guage cour­ses and flights. In some cases, high fees are still deman­ded if a pro­fes­sio­nal deci­des to lea­ve the employ­ment con­tract befo­re the end of a mini­mum peri­od. (3)

Nur­sing pro­fes­sio­nals are only paid as nur­sing assistants until their diplo­ma is reco­g­nis­ed, alt­hough they often do the same work as their regis­tered col­le­agues. Doc­tors from non-EU count­ries, who­se path to licen­su­re is often long, are initi­al­ly employ­ed with a pro­fes­sio­nal per­mit and paid as beg­in­ners regard­less of their real qua­li­fi­ca­ti­ons – in some cases they don’t even get pay accor­ding to coll­ec­ti­ve agree­ments at all.

Howe­ver, the big­gest pro­blem for the for­eign col­le­agues is pro­ba­b­ly the same that con­cerns the health pro­fes­sio­nals trai­ned in Ger­ma­ny: The eco­no­mi­sed care struc­tures, in which employees suf­fer from work inten­si­fi­ca­ti­on and staff shorta­ges against the back­drop of a medi­ci­ne ero­ded by the DRG (=Dia­gno­sis rela­ted Groups) finan­cing sys­tem and pro­fit inte­rests.

The fact that, of all places whe­re the­re is a shorta­ge of staff, for­eign col­le­agues, some of whom still have insuf­fi­ci­ent lan­guage skills and initi­al uncer­tain­ties about work pro­ces­ses and respon­si­bi­li­ties, are expec­ted to fill the gaps, cau­ses con­sidera­ble pro­blems – once again on the back of pati­ents and health workers. Many recrui­ted pro­fes­sio­nals suf­fer from not being able to use their pro­fes­sio­nal know­ledge and do a good job under the­se cir­cum­s­tances. In addi­ti­on, the­re are often other pro­blems that new immi­grants to Ger­ma­ny expe­ri­ence, such as social iso­la­ti­on, belitt­le­ment and racist dis­cri­mi­na­ti­on.

“For the gro­wing num­ber of col­le­agues from abroad, the­re must be bin­ding stan­dards for trans­pa­rent recruit­ment, free lan­guage cour­ses at a high level and con­cepts for suc­cessful onboar­ding,” says Karen Span­nen­krebs. “And for this onboar­ding, we need staff again”.

So the point remains: the down­ward spi­ral of incre­asing work den­si­ty and lea­ving the job in the hos­pi­tals must be stop­ped. This requi­res a real revo­lu­ti­on in hos­pi­tal finan­cing – which Lau­ter­bachs (Ger­man minis­ter of health) reform pro­po­sals will cer­tain­ly not bring about.

Ins­tead of glos­sy adver­ti­sing in count­ries of the Euro­pean and glo­bal peri­phery, we need good working con­di­ti­ons in the hos­pi­tals here – for all health workers, regard­less of whe­re they were trai­ned.

24.02.2023



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