On Tuesday afternoon I stepped into the Falu hospital. But this time not because I was sick, but to give a talk to hospital staff about writing and health. I always get very mixed feelings as soon as I enter a hospital: On the one hand, security; I know that if you happen to be really unwell, you can almost always feel safe in healthcare. But on the other hand: The weakness in the knees that comes from stepping into an environment that I associate with the long time I myself was in for care. Memories float up of physical weakness, fear.
I am reading the article. I think it highlights some of the important things that happen in a hospital that people generally don’t think about. When the care-related service decreases, or disappears, care will invariably function worse.
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Open image in full screen mode Caring service. Photo: Lina Hård. Picture: Lina Hård
I held my little one lecture at the hospital library. All my life I have considered writing as a kind of therapy, self-therapy. And I think it is important that patients talk about their illnesses and about the care they receive. There is something called narrative medicine (or storytelling medicine): How should healthcare professionals and patients communicate with each other? Everything possible stands in the way for it to work, from class experiences (those with low education can sometimes feel at a disadvantage) to ethnicity: How can an older immigrant who never really learned the Swedish language tell about his ailments? When communication breaks down in care, it can lead to both suffering and increased costs.
But it is also so that life in a hospital is generally under-depicted these days. You almost have to go back to PC Jersild’s novel and TV series Babels hus to find a broad representation of everything that moves in the labyrinths of care.
After mine lecture, a nice panel discussion is heard about writing as a path to health.
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The next day reads me DD journalist Lina Hård’s article about Vårdnära service. And becomes almost mentally ill with anger. The region must save. Everyone knows that by now. Bad times, combined with a government that refuses to give the healthcare system the financial support it needs, means that Swedish healthcare is now under the knife. Getting money for more tanks is now easy. But money for healthcare, which is fundamentally just as important for crisis preparedness, has become increasingly impossible.
What is Vårdnära? service? It is the staff in the hospitals who carry out necessary and basic work, such as meals for patients, cleaning, making beds, spritzing to get rid of infection, managing supplies and the like. The business has developed over the years precisely with the aim of relieving the care staff themselves so that they can deal with care and not, for example, cleaning.
Now it should be saved into that business. Forty positions are to be lost in various places in the county (a third of the staffing). Twenty million must be saved. In practice, this leads to an already understaffed healthcare staff being put in an even more pressured situation. Above all, it is the assistant nurses who have to take the hit.
The service employee Lottie says: “It’s absolutely insane really. Because I mean, they have to do more, the care. And they have other things to do, take care of patients and… yes. Otherwise they would be doing all this.”
I am reading the article. I think it highlights some of the important things that happen in a hospital that people generally don’t think about. When the care-related service decreases, or disappears, the care will unfailingly function worse – and in all probability it will in some way affect patient safety.
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What is bra for the healthcare staff is good for the patients. And vice versa. I think that during my talk and the panel discussion I am sitting in a hospital library. Just the fact that there is something like this in a hospital I see as something fantastic. On the floor above, an art exhibition is taking place. When I’ve been to Falu infirmary and other infirmaries, I’ve always looked curiously at the works of art hanging on the walls. They form windows with a view towards both oneself and others, good both for staff and for the sick.
A big hospital is a world. You can get lost in it. I have done it at Falu hospital and other hospitals. Wandered around and finally had the artwork as a guide.
The savings and cutbacks that are now cutting through the regions around Sweden and not least in Dalarna will impoverish the hospital world. Those who have it pressed get it even more pressed. In the DD article, we meet the service worker Jenny, who stands in the infection department and pours lingonberry jam for lunch into small bowls. Who will do it in the future?
Maybe one can doctor pull in and portion out the lingonberry jam? But it will probably be an assistant nurse.
I hope that many in Swedish healthcare these days write diaries, poems and short stories about all this. And also write contributors who direct their anger at a government that refuses to give a crisis healthcare system more money.
I myself feel fine possibly a little better after I wrote this.
Comment: Just at the moment I finished writing this article, the news comes that Vårdverbundet is going into an overtime blockade! It is good. The unions in health care must become more militant. We don’t agree! shouted a union voice just now from the radio.
