Are you a nurse and want to be paid NOK 95,000 a month and have as much holiday as you want? It sounds like a dream, but this is the reality in Helse-Norge today. Temporary nurses can earn up to NOK 100,000 in a month. On TikTok, there are several Norwegian nurses who talk about their everyday life as a “travel nurse”. Like many other things, the concept of “travelling nurse”, or substitute nurse, also comes from abroad. They tell about what it is like to take on assignments around Norway. They work as temporary workers in small and large places for a couple of weeks or a couple of months. They tell of periods of intensive work, and show fat payslips. If they want, they can take a holiday a couple of weeks before the next temporary assignment. Temporary agencies not only ensure that the salary payment is far higher than it is for permanent employees. They also provide housing and a rental car where the nurses will act as substitutes. Light as a speck. The use of temporary workers in the health service has increased dramatically in recent years. From 2012 to 2021, the use of hired healthcare personnel from temp agencies has doubled. In 2021, municipalities and hospitals paid NOK 3.4 billion to temp agencies. It is worst in Northern Norway. Although only 9 per cent of the population belongs to Helse Nord, our northernmost regional health enterprise accounts for 40 per cent of the temporary employment in the specialist health service nationally. As Helse Nord itself writes on its website: “It is both expensive and vulnerable.” But they further write: “Today’s structure is simply not possible to staff”. It is not true. A lack of professionals was the background for the closure plans in Helse Nord, which admittedly crashed at a board meeting and which the Minister of Health has so far kept quiet. In any case, the use of temporary workers shows that it is precisely possible to attract professionals, if you pay them enough. Temp workers usually earn more than permanent employees. And in addition, temporary agencies must have their share of the pie: It costs 2.5 times as much to hire a temporary worker as it costs to pay the permanent employees. It’s a bad deal. Not only does money that should have gone to healthcare disappear into the pockets of the owners of temp agencies, who make tens of millions in profit. It is also bad for the permanent employees, who constantly have to use their busy working hours to train new temporary workers. In addition, department managers have to spend a lot of time getting hold of professionals, and patients meet more and more new faces. The entire health sector is struggling to recruit enough people for vacant positions, and it is the vacant positions that are the main reason for hiring from temp agencies. So how will the health organizations and the municipal health service manage to recruit more health workers in permanent positions, rather than paying double the price for temporary workers? One of the young temporary nurses on TikTok says that she quit as a permanent nurse because she was “tired, overworked and earning little”. She is not alone in that. Seven out of ten nurses are considering quitting their job. Many have already quit. Poor staffing and poor pay are the two most common reasons given. Nurses are not the only ones who want to be paid for their work. In order for the current managing director of Helse Nord, Marit Lind, to be convinced to take the job, she demanded NOK 225,000 more than her predecessor, and ended up with an annual salary of NOK 2.3 million. For this sum, Lind has taken on the task of “restructuring” itself out of the staffing problems. Unfortunately, it is an impossible task. Director Lind should try what motivated her to accept her job, namely a salary increase. She doesn’t even have to ask the Minister of Health for more money. The money is already there. If the health organizations and municipalities had used permanent employees instead of hired health personnel from temp agencies, they would have saved NOK 2 billion. So there could have been just as many people at work, but 2 billion saved. 60 percent of hired temporary workers are nurses. So, for the sake of simplicity, let’s concentrate on this occupational group. If the two billion kroner that is now spent on expensive temporary workers had been spent on a pay rise, the 66,000 nurses who work in the municipal health service and health enterprises could have received a pay rise of nok 30,000. On top of the negotiated salary increase, this had been a significant boost for nurses. And this is without allocating a single extra kroner. Alternatively, the two billion could have been used to hire 2,570 more nurses around the country. Instead of repeating the myth that we have too few healthcare workers in this country, directors of healthcare organizations should look at what can make the jobs more attractive. It is urgent to make the nursing profession, and other professions within the sector, more attractive. The aging population will significantly increase the need for healthcare personnel. Then people must want to work in the health sector. A place to start is better pay for the effort.
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Nurses on TikTok explain the staffing crisis – Expression
