Thousands of healthcare workers plan to resign in Hungary – Fresh survey results

According to a recent survey carried out among Hungarian health care workers, more than 50% plan to leave the Hungarian health care system as soon as possible.

Since November 2020, the law prohibited the dismissal of doctors at the time of the emergency, which restriction was lifted from June 15th. Within the last eight months, they had the opportunity to resign only once when the health service legal relationship was introduced in March. At that time, dozens of health care workers left Hungarian hospitals. Numerically, about 5,000 health workers took advantage of the opportunity. At the same time, many decided to stay due to respect and responsibility for their patients and colleagues during the third wave of the pandemic.

Based on the results carried out by the Independent Health Trade Union (FESZ),

48% of about 1,200 respondents plan to resign as soon as the ban on the dismissal is lifted, while 8% plan to retire.

As the Hungarian news portal Népszava reports, the current survey also shows that less than half of those planning to leave would remain in health care. They would either take a job in another Hungarian public or private institution or would go abroad. All the rest of the respondents would leave their original profession. One-third of the respondents indicated that they were still unsure about staying, while only one-sixth of them would insist on their current jobs.

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Based on the answers of health care workers who plan to resign or leave the sector as soon as possible, the main reason behind is the low salary.

This has been confirmed by Adrianna Soós, president of FESZ, according to whom, among the reasons, low wages were most often mentioned. In addition, the introduction of a new employment relationship is also listed. The disadvantages of this legislation affect health care workers negatively, while only doctors have benefited from the significant wage increase. As a comparison,

the majority of health care workers did not have any change in their earnings, while the salaries of doctors increased by 80-120%. Most of the respondents consider this wage gap unbearable.

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Surprisingly, only 5% mentioned exhaustion from the Covid epidemic as the reason for leaving the sector. An additional possible reason is the low security of employment. As a result of the new health service status, it is much easier for employers to dismiss a healthcare worker than before. Because of the change in terms of service, many do not receive the jubilee reward, for example, which causes quite a bit of dissatisfaction.

There are also those whose income has decreased due to the change in legal relationship, despite this being prohibited by law. Of course, some health care workers could take advantage because the employer set higher allowances than before; however, the latter was only experienced by a negligible minority.

Moreover, as a result of the Personal Registration Act introduced a few weeks ago, in case of taking a second job, employees need to reveal data about their relatives, which for many goes beyond the private sphere, causing bad feelings in them. According to Adrianna Soós, even though they had similar surveys before, none of them had such a solid intention to leave their sector as in the case of health care workers.

Source: nepszava.hu