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Wilhelm Møller Faldalen checks the ventilator to make sure it is working if more patients are coming in. It is a daily routine for the intensive care nurse.
Three respirators are already in use. At Lovisenberg Hospital, they are not staffed to handle it. Usually they only have two respirator places in addition to three on surveillance. Therefore, nurses often go on double shifts of 15-18 hours.
– This is a predicted disaster. Some have 3-400 overtime hours this year. People also work on holidays and weekends, he says.
Lovisenberg Hospital in Oslo has plenty of rooms and equipment. The bottlenecks are intensive care nurses.
– There are not unusually many patients with respiratory infections at this time of year, but corona patients require much more resources than others, says Faldalen.
No more intensive care units
When Norway was hit by the pandemic on 12 March 2020, there were a total of 289 intensive care units in this country. It still is.
Several hospitals have created temporary places when needed, but they have to pick up staff from other departments.
– There has been an undercoverage of the intensive capacity in Norway in recent years. The pandemic did not improve the situation, says Nina Neteland.
She is the main shop steward at Bærum Hospital.
– It is a announced crisis, she says.
On Thursday, Bærum Hospital went into yellow emergency so that they can draw resources from other departments, but it is the intensive care nurse who is responsible anyway.
Here, too, the use of overtime has skyrocketed. According to local newspapers Budstikka it has doubled since 2018.
At the beginning of the year, the health regions were commissioned to train at least 100 new intensive care nurses. Neteland thinks it is too little and too late.
– Over time, not enough intensive care nurses have been trained, and then it has been sent to start with that in the middle of the crisis, she says.
FRP requires action
The Progress Party is not impressed with the government’s efforts.
– Now we have to again introduce restrictions for people due to the pandemic, and the government says it is due to the intensive capacity. Nevertheless, it does not earmark a penny for intensive capacity in the budget, says leader of the Progress Party, Sylvi Listhaug.
FRP itself has set aside NOK 500 million in its alternative budget to create 50 new intensive care units.
– I think the government has been waiting for the pandemic to pass. Now is the time to take action, she believes.
– What did you do in the government to contribute to better capacity and more intensive care nurses?
– What we have done in recent years is to strongly strengthen health services. Then you have not built up the capacity and we see in retrospect that you should have done, she answers.
– FRP is right to point to us, because we have an intention to increase intensive capacity in contrast to the previous government, parries State Secretary in the Ministry of Health, Karl Kristian Bekeng (Labor).
In addition to training 100 new intensive care nurses, the government has set aside an additional NOK 25 million for new educational positions. Bekeng says they have also increased the basic funding to 700 million more hospitals than the Solberg government proposed.
The Labor Secretary of State says increased basic funding is what is needed to increase intensive capacity in the long run, and points out that before the pandemic there was no political will to do something.
– After the swine flu, a report to the Storting came in 2013 which pointed to a need for increased intensive capacity. But for some years it was not a political priority, but we want to do something about it, he loves.
Wilhelm Møller Faldalen hopes the politicians have got a wake-up call and that he gets more eventually:
– It is strange that you have not started before, he says.