Nurse Jennifer denounces care as a revenue model: ‘Trust is the basis’

The nurse was shocked when she heard the advice last week to cut 2.7 billion euros in care for the elderly by 2029. Researchers argue that “drastic choices” are needed. The number of elderly people will increase sharply in the next twenty years. If nothing changes, expenditure will double to 37 billion euros in 2040 and 367,000 extra care providers will be needed in elderly care, they claim.

Nonsense, Jennifer thinks. “If you were to spend your money more wisely and put it into healthcare, the cutbacks would not be necessary. 32 billion is earned from healthcare. That money goes to research, consultancy firms and boards, for example. Healthcare has become a revenue model and there goes wrong.”

The article continues under the fragment in which Jennifer Bergkamp speaks about the cutbacks during talk show Op1.

The nurse does not see the consequences of the cuts rosy. “With every policy implementation you see: they have no idea what is going on in the workplace. There is no communication between the policy makers and the people who carry out the work. If this continues, care situations will derail and care workers will be overburdened. distrust will only grow.”

Confidence, according to Jennifer, is the basis of her profession. “We also expect trust from administrators, health insurers and the government,” she says. “The people I come home to are often in a vulnerable situation. They have to get to know me first. The best moment in healthcare is when you gain confidence and can give back.”

If there is more trust in the care provider, it becomes easier to provide appropriate care. “When checking, you put clients in boxes of syndromes and diagnoses, while everyone reacts differently to an illness. If you are given the space to make the care suitable, it is a lot cheaper and you need fewer parties who want to say something about it .”

It differs per person how you gain someone’s trust. “For that, you have to get to know someone,” explains Jennifer. “For one it is a conversation, for another a cup of coffee and for another it is doing the dishes. But it also depends on someone’s experience within healthcare: if there was no time for you before , it will take a lot of effort for the new healthcare provider to regain trust.”

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Jennifer gives an example. “An elderly lady with dementia from Rijsenhout started throwing crockery. Normally you think: ‘I’m leaving, this is dangerous.’ But if you invest time and talk to her, she can calm down and you can give her the medication, if she hadn’t gotten it from me, she might have gone outside, wrecked cars, or walked into the ditch. “

Control compulsion

So gaining confidence takes time, but according to Jennifer, that’s not wasted time. “Taking time for the clients gives you a lot of time in return. If they have confidence in you, they know that you will be there when they need it. It removes the need for control from clients and that saves a lot of calls to healthcare providers and – institutions.”

Another example: she was recently working in a neighborhood in Burgerveen. She visited an older lady, a ‘lady of standing’, the nurse calls her. “She found it very difficult to pronounce it to me,” she says. But as an experienced nurse, Jennifer knew enough after a few words: “The lady needed incontinence pads.”

After two days of calling, step one was completed: Jennifer had arranged an intake interview between the older lady and the supplier. “The lady had to explain everything to him in scents and colors to get her stuff. That’s actually a vote of no confidence in my estimation, and for the lady in question to cry.”

It is just one of the many examples where things go wrong in healthcare. “The system on which care runs is based on control. Control is precisely what costs so much time and money. The care staff must gain more confidence. Then there is also more room to work on the confidence of our clients .”