Many nursing staff and care home residents have been exposed this summer to temperatures that breach occupational health and safety legislation and pose a direct risk to health, according to trade union figures. The findings come from a survey by the union Verdi covering 321 nursing staff and other employees of care facilities, reported by the Funke newspaper group on Saturday. "The accounts given by employees reveal conditions that are in some cases alarming," said Verdi executive board member Sylvia Bühler, commenting on the results.
"Temperatures of up to 45 degrees in some care homes are unbearable for employees and can be life-threatening for residents," Bühler warned. She said the high temperatures were having severe consequences for the people living in these facilities. In the survey, eleven percent of employees working in the facilities reported cases of circulatory collapse among residents, ten percent reported cases of dehydration, and nine percent reported deaths presumed to be connected to the heat.
According to the union, participants were asked to record the temperature in their facilities at regular intervals between 30 July and 10 August. This produced a total of 801 individual measurements. At its peak, Verdi says, the daytime temperature climbed to as much as 45 degrees. Median values stood at 26 degrees overnight, between 1am and 3am, and 25 degrees in the early morning, between 6am and 8am, while readings across the course of the day ranged from 28 to 30 degrees.
Under occupational health and safety legislation, effective countermeasures must be taken once room temperatures reach 30 degrees, and from 35 degrees a room is in principle no longer considered suitable as a workspace. Verdi reports that 40.9 percent of the employees who recorded temperatures submitted at least one reading above 30 degrees, and 12.8 percent submitted at least one above 35 degrees.
Bühler called on the federal and state governments to launch an urgent emergency programme for heat protection and energy-efficient refurbishment of care facilities. "Adequate state funding for investment would also reduce the high personal contributions that many residents cannot afford," she said. Staffing levels, already far too thin in everyday operations, "collapse completely during periods of heat," Bühler criticised.
Verdi is therefore calling on the federal government to carry out a thorough revision of its plans for long-term care insurance. "Instead of cuts, what is finally needed are needs-based requirements for staffing levels, and these must be fully refinanced," Bühler urged.
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