"I don’t believe anything they say anymore, not a single word." At the other end of the phone line you can hear the pure disappointment. "Nurse unvaccinated", the 37-year-old from Bonn has written on the advertising portal Ebay: "Intensive care and anesthesia specialist seeks a new job starting in March." It has always been her dream to go into the nursing profession, she says. She sounds exhausted, but prudent. She loves work, but doesn’t trust "politics" anymore.
Because bed capacity was never a problem during the Corona pandemic. But chronically overworked staff and staff shortages that will be exacerbated by the dismissal of unvaccinated personnel.
Screenshot of an advertisement on eBay classifieds
Twice she had already fallen ill with Covid-19, both times with mild course. A vaccination, if at all, would only help people over 60, she believes. "But now the vaccination obligation for hospitals and care facilities – I don’t go along with that anymore."She is thinking of moving to Switzerland because it is possible to work there without a corona vaccination.
Vaccination obligation for nursing staff
Since mid-December, a Corona vaccination requirement for employees in hospitals and nursing homes has been a done deal. On 16. March it should come into force. On Ebay and in some East and South German daily newspapers, numerous ads were placed by alleged health and care professionals who were unvaccinated.
How many of the job searches are genuine is hard to say. When checking the advertisements in an East German newspaper, it was found that many of the telephone numbers given were not in use.
Nurse Classifieds
On Ebay, there are also numerous searches for a new job in North Rhine-Westphalia. "Nursing assistant unvaccinated", from Bergheim, for example, is looking for employment within a radius of 20 kilometers. He used to work in a home, but because of the new infection control law this is no longer possible.
"Occupational therapist (30J.), unvaccinated, looking for the 15.03.22 a job", is headed an announcement from Hurth. "I am responsible, well-organized and motivated to gain a foothold in a new profession," it says. And a according to advertisement "nice nurse" from Cologne writes: "I am looking for a new job, because due to the decision of the government from the 16.03.22 no longer allowed to work. This hurts a lot, but I don’t see the need to get vaccinated. It is flexible: "From Cologne, Dusseldorf to Dortmund."
90 percent of medical staff vaccinated
About 20 million people in Germany have not yet received a Corona vaccination, the Robert Koch Institute said in response to a request for information. How it looks in the medical and nursing professions, there are only estimates on this. According to the report, about 89 percent of nursing home staff and 90 percent of medical staff had been vaccinated by the end of last year.
Is there now a threat of what the departed health minister Jens Spahn (CDU) had feared coming to pass, namely a wave of layoffs in the already struggling nursing sector?
"Staffing levels have been stretched to the limit for years."
Rather not, says Burkhardt Zieger, NRW speaker of the "German professional association for nursing professions" (DBfK). "I cannot imagine this happening on a large scale, I would wait and see."In individual cases, however, there may well be problems in the care provided.
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"The personnel cover is simply already for years so on edge sewn, if then only a small number of coworkers says, we go, can lead in individual mechanisms to substantial bottlenecks."
Burkhardt Zieger is NRW spokesman for the "German Professional Association for Nursing Professions" (DBfK)
Even before Corona, the waiting times for a place in an old people’s home or for outpatient care were very long. The discussion about compulsory vaccination in the medical field is "unspeakable", says Zieger.
"Were already before the Pandemie at the end"
"Because one does not have the courage to push through a general vaccination obligation, the responsibility for the pandemic development is located with the professional group, of all things, which has been particularly committed in the last two years."This can not be right. "Our colleagues were already pretty much at the end of their tether before the pandemic, and now this is on top of it: this is really big crap, you’re starting to lose trust."
"Nursing specialists wanted! (unvaccinated)"
Screenshot of an ad on eBay classifieds
In addition to offers from Switzerland, there are recently also requests from a personnel service provider from North Rhine-Westphalia on Ebay, which advertise with secure jobs for unvaccinated nursing professionals. An explicit field of application is not mentioned in the advertisements. From a telephone conversation with the personnel service provider it emerged that this should mainly be administrative work, for example from the home office.