Save agent for costs?: 150 Spitex nurses in Chur work without a boss

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Tamara Jenni (34) did not mourn her bosses. “I like to organize my day myself and sometimes take on daily responsibility for the team,” says the health specialist.

150 nurses at Spitex Chur have been working without a management team for four years. They write their own schedules, decide who to hire and how much time to spend with patients.

Nowadays there is a shortage of nursing staff in Switzerland and at the same time healthcare costs are rising. Such self-organizing teams could help with this.

Successful model from the Netherlands

The model is the ‘Buurtzorg’ model from the Netherlands – in German it means ‘buurtzorg’. More than 14,000 nurses work without a manager. This means there is less bureaucracy – and healthcare costs have fallen drastically: According to founder Jos de Blok (63), around 660 million euros are saved every year.

The nurses at Spitex Chur organize themselves according to this example. They divide tasks such as quality control and finance among themselves. For example, Jenni regularly writes the operational planning. For special merits, informal caregivers can even spontaneously pay themselves a bonus salary.

Not an easy import into Switzerland

However, the brave new world of care cannot be imported so easily from the Netherlands. “There was hope that the new model would also increase efficiency,” says Daniel Jörg, co-director of Spitex Chur. So far, healthcare costs have not fallen.

Jörg attributes this to the different roles: This makes the work varied, but leads to less efficiency.

Furthermore, Spitex Chur still operates within the loopholes of the Swiss healthcare system – the administrative effort could not have been reduced as much as in the Netherlands. For example, Jörg is responsible for overall business operations and the nurses are supported by HR employees – the latter are no longer needed in the Netherlands.

Attractive for young caregivers

Working without a boss can still be an advantage, especially for young nurses: “Young people want to have a say. “That fits with the spirit of today,” says Jörg.

Although around 300 nurses leave the profession every month in Switzerland, Spitex Chur has no problems recruiting: “Last year we grew by almost fifty employees. We also have sufficiently qualified nurses. This is not self-evident in the industry at the moment,” says Jörg.

A future model?

But for some longtime employees, the change hasn’t been entirely easy, Jenni says. “You’re used to a leader.”

Yet Jörg sees nursing without a boss as a model for the future: he hopes that this will make it more attractive for young people to return to nursing. And then stay there: Tamara Jenni cannot imagine any other work.

Source:Blick