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There is a staffing crisis in Scanian’s IVA departments: Doctors, nurses and auxiliary nurses can be ordered to work 12-hour shifts. Skåne’s care association now wants certain health workers to be first in line for vaccination. But there is no such plan in Skåne.
Malin Tillgren, president of the Care Association in Skåne, wants to change the order of priority so that care staff in IVA, emergency departments and ambulance care are vaccinated first.
IVA care staff, emergency rooms and ambulance staff should be given priority for vaccination against COVID-19, according to the Skåne Health Association.
– It would have been a great benefit for society to prioritize healthcare personnel. This is an issue that we will raise nationally, given the situation with so many patients, says Malin Tillgren, president of the Skåne Health Association.
The question of whether VAT personnel should be vaccinated before It has been debated in the Skåne Region and is still on the table, says Per Hagstam, assistant infection control physician and vaccination coordinator in Skåne:
– But our basic attitude is to follow the order of priority of the Public Health Agency. Health professionals have priority in phase two and will receive the vaccine in early February.
– Now the first weeks we focus entirely on the extremely fragile groups in nursing homes and those who have home care.
“It is difficult to prioritize within the group of important health workers,” says Per Hagstam, vaccination coordinator in Skåne. But the question of letting VAT staff take precedence has been raised and is still on the table.
When there is a crisis situation in Skåne and a large sick leave among the VAT staff. Is there no reason to rethink the key group, which cannot be that large?
– There are great difficulties in many parts of medical care, IVA staff is definitely such a group, but there are also staff problems in elderly care, in the emergency room, in infection clinics. It is difficult to prioritize within the group of important health personnel; then it will be significantly more than a few hundred people, Per Hagstam responds at the region’s press conference.
Malin Tillgren in Vårdförbundet Skåne points out that it is always a difficult ethical discussion to decide who and which groups should be vaccinated first:
– But somewhere we can see that it would have been an advantage to prioritize health personnel within VAT, in emergency rooms and ambulance personnel.
– At the same time, it is difficult to differentiate between healthcare personnel, because they are all dependent on each other and share a chain. We need staff in the regular rooms, X-rays, laboratory staff, and we need midwives to take care of women giving birth, for example.
When news broke that the elderly and frail would be vaccinated first, the Health Association thought it was completely correct.
– But the number of patients with covid has skyrocketed, so now it should change the order of priority in favor of health personnel, says Malin Tillgren.
Skåne region It was approved on Tuesday to activate a crisis agreement for VAT personnel. This means that specially skilled care staff can be scheduled in frequent 12-hour shifts, up to 48 hours a week.
The situation is exacerbated by many cases of illness among IVA staff, the ability to open more IVA sites is much lower than in the spring, and Scanian’s medical care is nearing the maximum.
Seriously ill coviditis patients have already been sent to Kalmar and Karlskrona, in the next step they can be sent to other hospitals in the country where there are vacancies.
