Sweden’s healthcare system bogged down by shortage of doctors, nurses

Asia Nader didn’t know whether to worry more about being diagnosed with a hole in her heart at the age of 21, or having to wait a year for Swedish doctors to fix it.

“I completely fell apart when I found out,” she told AFP, remembering the long agonising months until she finally had her operation in June this year, one month before her 23rd birthday.


Sweden has the fifth-highest life expectancy in Europe and cancer survival rates are among the continent’s highest, according to 2017 OECD figures.

But Swedes are frustrated over their universal healthcare, one of the main pillars of their cherished welfare state, with long waiting queues due to a shortage of nurses and available doctors in some areas.

“Swedes have little confidence that politicians will solve this,” said Lisa Pelling, chief analyst at progressive think tank Arena Ide.

“There is a risk their faith in the welfare state will be eroded,” she told AFP.

Swedes, who on average pay more than half of their income in tax, see access to healthcare as the most important issue in the September 9 general election, polls suggest.

Prime Minister Stefan Lofven’s Social Democrats, the largest party, are on course for a record low score, after losing voters disgruntled over rising immigration putting a strain on the welfare system to the far-right Sweden Democrats.

‘Lose time’

Swedish law stipulates patients should wait no more than 90 days to undergo surgery or see a specialist. Yet every third patient waits longer, according to government figures.

Patients must also see a general practitioner within seven days, the second-longest deadline in Europe after Portugal (15 days).

Yet waiting times vary dramatically across Sweden’s 21 counties responsible for financing hospitals.

One dental patient in central Dalarna county told AFP six months passed before his check-up, while emergency room queues at Stockholm’s largest hospitals average four hours.

The 2016 nationwide median wait for prostate cancer surgery was 120 days, but 271 days in the northern county of Vasterbotten, official figures show.

Swedes also complain about not being able to see their own regular general practitioner — and the ensuing lack of continuity — as a growing number of doctors and nurses are temporary hires employed by staffing companies.

Some 80 percent of the healthcare sector is in need of nurses, according to official data.

Online services where patients see a doctor via webcam, have mushroomed as a result.

“Every time you seek help you also see a new doctor… This makes us lose time on assessments and follow-ups,” Heidi Stenmyren, president of the Swedish Medical Association, told AFP.

World’s most expensive hospital

In Solleftea, the premier’s northern hometown with nearly 20,000 residents, the only maternity ward was shut down last year to save money.

With the closest maternity ward now 200 kilometres (125 miles) away, midwives offer parents-to-be classes on how to deliver babies in cars — which some have since done.



Sweden has the EU’s third-highest spending on healthcare — 11 percent share of its GDP — and the heart attack survival rate is above the OECD average.

“I get worried sometimes when people disparage Swedish healthcare as if it didn’t work at all… It’s not black or white,” Lofven told Swedish television SVT.

But the number of hospital beds has declined in recent years, as has the average length of stay.

Frustrations peaked this year when it emerged that the bill for Stockholm’s over-budget state-of-the-art New Karolinska Hospital would tick in at 61.4 billion kronor (5.8 billion euros, $6.7 billion) — the most expensive hospital in the world.

And yet patients have had to be transferred to other overcrowded hospitals because some of the facilities are unusable.

Making matters worse, Sweden’s aging population has growing healthcare needs.

“In only five years, we will have 70,000 more people aged 75 or older… and that comes with more frequent illnesses,” Lofven told AFP.

His Social Democrats have vowed to spend three billion kronor to hire more healthcare staff if re-elected.

The opposition Moderates, which governed for two consecutive terms before the Social Democrats took power in 2014, meanwhile want to reintroduce a law that rewards counties for shortening queues.

But critics say this just encourages doctors to prioritize easily-solved cases.  /vvp

source: newsinfo.inquirer.net

Study links higher caffeine consumption with lower tinnitus risk

NEW YORK - Tinnitus, an annoying ringing or buzzing in the ears, was less likely to occur in women who consumed the most caffeine, a large study of nurses found.

Tinnitus can happen sporadically, or in some cases may plague a person daily. The cause is unclear, and so is the reason why caffeine would lower one’s risk of developing the condition, researchers say.

But tinnitus treatment guidelines sometimes advise cutting out caffeine, which may have no basis.

“In the ear, nose and throat literature and textbooks they often tell people with tinnitus to avoid caffeine because it can make tinnitus worse, but there really wasn’t great data to even support that,” said the senior author of the new study, Dr. Gary Curhan, of the Channing Division of Network Medicine at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston.

Tinnitus affects approximately 50 million Americans, but little is known about risk factors other than exposure to loud noises and that it can be a side effect of certain medications, including aspirin.

Caffeine has long been thought to contribute to the development of tinnitus, but research has been lacking, Curhan and his coauthors write in The American Journal of Medicine.

To assess the relationship, the researchers analyzed data on more than 65,000 women participants in the Nurses’ Health Study II. The women were in their 20s through 40s in 1991 and none had tinnitus at that point. They filled out dietary questionnaires every four years during the study.

In 2009, the participants were asked if they had ringing, roaring or buzzing in their ears during the previous year. The researchers found that 5,289 women reported having those symptoms "a few days a week" or "daily."

On average, the women consumed about 242 milligrams of caffeine per day, which is equal to about three 8-ounce cups of coffee.

“In our study, individuals who had higher caffeine intake, usually in the form of coffee, had a lower risk of subsequently developing tinnitus than those with the lowest intake of caffeine,” Curhan said.

The incidence of tinnitus was 15 percent lower among women who consumed 450 to 599 mg/day of caffeine, equivalent to 6-8 cups of coffee, when compared to the women who consumed less than 150 milligrams per day, equivalent to about a half a cup.

Because coffee was the most common source of caffeine, the researchers also looked at decaffeinated coffee, but didn’t find the same apparent benefit, which suggests the association is only with caffeine, not some other substance in coffee.

The study cannot prove that caffeine protected some women from developing tinnitus, the authors caution, and it doesn’t suggest that people with tinnitus should boost their caffeine consumption to try to treat the condition.

“It was an interesting article. I think it certainly gives us pause to kind of look at things further,” Jennifer Ploch told Reuters Health.

A senior clinical audiologist with the University of Wisconsin Hospital and Clinics in Madison, Ploch noted that the study doesn’t try to answer the question of whether increasing caffeine intake makes any difference in people who already have tinnitus.

“That is the $10 million question—could this be something that we look into to that would really help us with our tinnitus patients?” said Ploch, who wasn’t involved in the new study.

As far as prevention of tinnitus, she said there aren’t many recommendations.

“Our general guidelines are if you have significant noise exposure, wearing ear protection and being diligent about your ear protection, is one good preventive measure,” she said. “Aside from protecting your hearing as much as you can, there's not one good preventive measure to avoid it.” — Reuters

POEA warns vs. work permit scam victimizing nurses

The Philippine Overseas Employment Administration (POEA) on Friday warned prospective overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) against a new scam involving work permit visa coaching for nursing jobs at Singapore General Hospital (SGH).

Lee Wanhui of SGH's human resource division wrote POEA administrator Hans Leo Cacdac about the "false acclamation of offer" where the victims are requested to pay P3,800 as "Singapore Work Permit Visa Coaching Fee."

"In the emails which were sent to the candidates allegedly under SGH’s name, the candidates were requested to make payment of (P3,800) through a bank account (not owned by SGH) as Singapore Work Permit Visa Coaching Fee. In addition, these emails were sent by forging our Nursing Director’s name," the email said.




The text of the email was posted on the POEA's Facebook page, while Cacdac posted a link to it on his Twitter account.


 SGH also said the fake employment offers were issued with the email address sgh_recruitment@outlook.com to "a number of candidates" from the Philippines for the position of Staff Nurse and Enrolled Nurse in SGH.

It added the sender of the scam emails used SGH's online job advertisement without the hospital's approval.

"We would like to put on (record) that our (organization), SGH, did not authorize any company under the email of sgh_recruitment@outlook.com and/or its personnel to make any offer of employment on behalf of SGH and neither did we request for any form of payment to be made to us or to any bank account," Lee said.

Lee said the SGH learned of the scam after it started receiving email inquiries on Thursday from candidates who were verifying the authenticity of the emails.

"We had immediately responded to these candidates to inform them that the emails which they had received were forged and not authorized by SGH," Lee said.

Lee asked the POEA to "investigate and/or stop this scam." — KBK, GMA News

source: gmanetwork.com