Nursing jobs Record: “Doing nothing is not an option. We need every worker”
That there is a shortage of nursing and care experts is far from new. The aging population ensures that there is also much more need for care due to the increasing number of elderly people. There is even a double effect of the aging population. After all, more and more nurses and nurses are also flowing out. The baby boomers leave en masse with retirement. And to make matters worse, fewer nurses are graduating. Last year 1,528 nurses put a bachelor’s degree in their pocket, a decrease of 40 percent compared to six years earlier, it brought it Newspaper Last week out.
Figures that Flemish MP Katrien Schryvers (CD&V) requested from Flemish Minister for Work Zuhal Demir (N-VA) now shows that the number of vacancies for nurses is also at a record high. Last year no less than 10,023 walked in at the VDAB, just under 700 less than in 2023. In five years it is an increase of 53 percent.
« The need for nurses is incredibly great. If you see that on average 27 vacancies were reported per day, you realize how enormous the challenge is to make people warm for this job, » says Schryvers.
No improvement
Dear Dhaene of Zorgnet-Icuro fully confirms the position. « Finding nursing and care experts has been the biggest problem for care institutions since Corona. In all sectors, by the way: in the hospitals, the residential care centers, mental health care, … we expect no improvement in the coming years. After all, there are only eight that enter, » it sounds.
Flemish MP Katrien Schryvers (CD&V) believes that a whole arsenal of measures is needed to help the shortage of nurses from the world. – © Belga
At the umbrella association of care organizations, people want to make people warmer to get into healthcare. The government must also allow certain profiles – for example an occupational therapist – to also perform certain actions that are now only reserved for nurses, albeit under supervision.
Making training more attractive
« And we also focus on side entrants, » says Lieve Dhaene. Only the federal government wants to limit unemployment benefits to two years. Anyone who is following a nurse training therefore loses his benefit after two years. CD&V, but also ahead, wants to do something about this, but catches bone for the time being. « We need a Bazooka of measures. Doing nothing is really not an option. We need every worker, » says Schryvers.
“We need a Bazooka of measures. Doing nothing is really not an option. We need every worker”
Katrien Schryvers
Flemish MP CD&V
The CD&V’ster also proposes to make the training more attractive. Among other things by introducing an expense allowance for students who perform a work internship in their fourth year.
Not only the number of vacancies for nurses is in the Zenit. The demand for health care experts has never been so great in recent years with 4,544 vacancies. In total, the VDAB had 58,567 vacancies for the entire healthcare sector last year – in health care and social services. Only during Corona those figures were slightly higher, but also apart from that, these are record figures. After the nurses there is the most demand for cleaners at people’s homes, educator supervisors, health care scientists and supervisors in childcare.
