The National Board of Health and Welfare is tasked by the government to partly prepare for civilian service for individuals who already have a license for a profession within healthcare, and partly investigate whether young people who are conscripted could be taken out for healthcare education and then be required to serve in the event of war or heightened preparedness.
This is fundamentally positive, according to the Chair of the Swedish Association of Hospital Physicians, Elin Karlsson, but she sees that it is difficult to have good preparedness even in times without crisis and war.
It's not actually a lack of healthcare-educated personnel, but rather a flight from healthcare due to poor conditions and working conditions.
She believes it is unrealistic to think that it is possible to scale up when healthcare is struggling to handle everyday life.
We have queues and a shortage of hospital beds when we instead need incentives to keep personnel in clinical practice.
The Chair of the Swedish Medical Association, Sofia Rydgren Stale, agrees.
The absolute best and fastest preparedness measure is to get the existing personnel to want to stay within healthcare.
She also sees a danger in using civilian service as a tool to solve healthcare's staffing problems in peacetime.
Healthcare needs to be strengthened, and some form of personnel reserve in the event of a larger crisis or war is probably necessary. But it is very important that it is clearly regulated in which cases civilian service can be invoked. Those who have chosen to leave healthcare should not be used as a buffer to solve healthcare's competence supply in peacetime, says Rydgren Stale.
