Virtually all employers in the Netherlands are faced with staff shortages, but those shortages in the GGZ make the situation extra dire, with waiting times of up to 30 weeks. Brabant mental health care institutions are also faced with the challenge of both retaining staff and attracting new staff. In the meantime, even psychiatrists from abroad are brought here to combat the shortages.
Several Brabant mental health institutions informed Omroep Brabant how they are trying to find a solution for the staff shortage. Every effort is made to make it as attractive as possible for the employees.
For example, students are hired to gain experience, there are bonuses if you manage to recruit someone and team leaders keep a finger on the pulse of the condition of the staff.
“Instead of performance interviews, we now conduct vitality interviews,” says HR manager Erik-Jan Zwiep of the GGZ Novadic-Kentron. “The central point in those conversations is whether the caregivers are still able to keep up with the work at all, instead of how well they perform.”
“If there are too few fish in the pond, you have to look for other ponds.”
Novadic-Kentron even goes so far as to bring staff from abroad to overcome the shortage. “We get psychiatrists from all over the world,” says Zwiep. “We use all channels to recruit staff, but that is not enough. If there are too few fish in the pond, you have to look for other ponds.”
Before the foreign psychiatrists can work here, they must learn Dutch. This is worthwhile for Novadic-Kentron: “There are simply too few healthcare professionals in the Netherlands.” The organization also plans to recruit foreign nurses in the same way.
There are currently hundreds of vacancies at GGZ institutions in Brabant. The staff shortage is no longer limited only to the caring roles, but is now felt in all layers of the organisations.
“Our telephone operators and secretaries also indicate that they experience more work pressure,” says Rebekka Veraa, HRM Manager at the Brabant mental health organization Apanta.
“We have to watch out for a downward spiral.”
According to Zwiep, it is important to prevent staff from being out for a long time. “The fact is that we have shortages,” he says. “This increases the risk of too much work pressure. We have to watch out for a downward spiral.”
The high workload and staff shortages are evident from the long waiting times for mental health care. Currently, these are the longest waiting times by region in Brabant, according to Vektis data from August 2022:
- West Brabant: 31 weeks for eating disorders.
- Central Brabant: 28 weeks for schizophrenia.
- Southeast Brabant: almost 28 weeks for neurobiological developmental disorders.
- Northeast Brabant: 31 weeks for personality disorder.
According to Zwiep, prevention is the key to a sustainable solution. To ensure that, for example, it does not have to come to addiction care. “That is where the challenge lies for the entire healthcare sector, politicians and insurers. In our opinion, prevention is always better than cure.”