labour market
No shortage of young people – but medical staff urgently needed
A sign indicates the 2G Plus rule in a café in the Baltic Sea resort of Rügen. Photo: Stefan Sauer/dpa
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They used to be called medical assistants, today they are medical assistants. If a practice advertises a position, applications are by no means certain. Because the wanted people can also work elsewhere.
According to estimates from the healthcare industry, medical assistants (MFA) are still desperately sought following.
According to data from the Federal Institute for Vocational Training (BIBB), MFA was the number one training occupation for women last year. Nevertheless, many medical practices look in vain when a position is to be filled. “I don’t think the situation will improve in the short term. It is a failure of many years, »said the chairman of the National Association of Statutory Health Insurance Physicians (KBV), Andreas Gassen, of the German Press Agency. “Fortunately, MFA training is very popular, so there are young people, but we also have a huge need.”
“It is already the case that some medical practices cannot fill positions for MFA,” said Gassen. “When things get really tight, someone from the family sometimes has to step in and then sits on the phone.” The institution-related vaccination obligation will definitely exacerbate the situation. Some of the employees in the care sector and possibly also in the practices will not be vaccinated. “And that also has supply-related consequences if medical practices suddenly close in certain areas.”
The Federal Constitutional Court last gave the green light for the punctual implementation of the corona vaccination requirement for nursing and health workers in an urgent procedure in mid-March. However, the comprehensive examination of constitutional complaints is still pending. The German Foundation for Patient Protection warned that “tens of thousands of unvaccinated employees will be absent”.
According to the Federal Employment Agency, 25,000 more people from the health and social sector registered as job seekers in December and January than usual. A spokeswoman recently explained that there had been calls on various social media to register as a job seeker before compulsory vaccination came into force.
Similar to Gassen, the second chairwoman of the Association of Medical Professionals (VMF), Stephanie Schreiber, assesses the development on the labor market: “What is striking is that it takes a very long time to fill vacancies,” she said. “Some practices search for months before someone applies for a position. The problem is getting worse, we are convinced of that.”
Of the approximately 407,000 trained MFAs in Germany, around 330,000 are employed in medical practices. “But there are many MFAs who see that they either go to hospitals or to outpatient care because they sometimes have significantly less stress there or the salary is higher,” said Schreiber, who is a trained MFA herself.
According to Gassen, there is intense competition for the MFA. “We now have a situation where hospitals are massively poaching medical assistants. Unfortunately, we have a structural competitive disadvantage in the practices because the statutory health insurance companies do not want to fully counter-finance the extensive wage increase from last year as increased costs, »said Gassen. “That means it is very difficult for medical practices to pay these higher salaries. That only exacerbates the problem.”
With regard to the hospitals, their importance for health care is repeatedly discussed during the pandemic, but the practices are not perceived to the same extent, according to the KBV chairman. “We would have expected that there would also be a state corona bonus for them.”
Schreiber also criticized the fact that no special bonus was provided for MFA. “A very big problem is the lack of appreciation from politics, from society and now in the pandemic from the patients,” she said. Some of them are becoming increasingly demanding and aggressive. “The colleagues are attacked, verbally, sometimes also physically.” The MFA felt disappointed and left alone by politics. “One has the feeling that outpatient standard care is completely out of sight, it is not noticed.”
The majority of Covid patients are treated on an outpatient basis. According to Schreiber, the stress has increased, for example due to additional vaccination tasks. But also due to the implementation of the test strategy, the necessary reorganization of the consultation hours and the unreliable delivery quantity of the vaccine doses to be ordered weekly, an extremely large amount of overtime had accumulated. “There are colleagues who start earlier, finish later and no longer have a lunch break.”
