Briefly about personnel and gaps to be filled, it involves a lot of overtime work.
Nursing staff at several of the country's larger hospitals have to work hard to keep the operation going this summer, according to the union.
I see a high risk of exhaustion, says specialist nurse Ann-Marie Karmborg.
Summer is often a strained time for healthcare, and this year is no exception.
One is short of personnel and there are many patients. One has a fixed minimum staffing and one is often below it, says Emma Jonsson, chairman of the Nursing Association's Stockholm branch.
The understaffing is not just about not having enough personnel, but also about lacking people on site with the right competence, she says. It can be about replacing a nurse with a nurse's assistant.
One replaces the competence and thinks it will be enough – it's not. It's very serious, actually.
Must cover up
Ola Palo, chief safety representative at Sahlgrenska University Hospital in Gothenburg, also testifies to a demanding summer.
It's a pretty tight work environment for our employees, and they need to cover up a lot for those who are on vacation, he says.
The overtime ban that was introduced in the spring is now just a memory. One builds the operation very much on overtime from the staff.
It's not what the Nursing Association advocates. We think there should be an operation that works when we're on vacation, so we don't have to feel guilty.
Returning to the night
The same picture is shared by Kenneth Byström, chairman of the Nursing Association's Västernorrland branch. He describes how work shifts are often extended. After working during the day, you have to stay on in the evening, or go home and then come back and work at night.
In the region, alarms were sounded in the spring that they were facing a tough summer in terms of staffing.
Our concern was that it would become very strained, and it has been so far. You often don't have the energy for any private life when you get home, you go and lie down to be able to go to work again.
Ann-Marie Karmborg is a safety representative at Skåne University Hospital and works as a specialist nurse in psychiatry. According to her, the crisis situation is the new normal.
You can work 19 hours straight if someone calls in sick. The nurse group is heavily pressured. I see a high risk of exhaustion with all this overtime and all our flexibility, she says.
She means that the stop of agency nurses in January hit hard against an already fragile organization.
I would like to see a kind of accident investigation into who is responsible for this collapse.
The Nursing Association issued a warning of overtime and extra work blockage that came into effect on April 25 for around 63,000 members in the country's regions. The blockage was extended on May 20 to also apply to several larger municipalities and an additional 5,000 members.
On May 21, the Nursing Association extended its conflict warning to include a strike in five regions: Stockholm, Västra Götaland, Skåne, Östergötland, and Västerbotten. The strike came into effect on June 4 for around 2,000 people.
The strike was extended on June 11 to also include, among others, Värmland and covered an additional approximately 1,300 midwives, biomedical analysts, radiology nurses, and nurses.
On June 28, the healthcare conflict was over when both parties accepted the mediators' offer, which included some working hour reductions.
