September 12, 2023

The Japan Federation of Prefectural and Municipal Workers' Unions (Jichiroren), at a press conference held on September 11 in the Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry office, published survey results regarding the situation of staff working at municipal-owned hospitals.

Jichiroren surveyed 8,584 municipal hospital workers in September 2022 and found that more than 80% of municipal nurses "want to quit" their jobs because of excessively long working hours in addition to heavy workloads due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

In the survey, 82.3% of respondents answered that they have "experienced" errors caused by a shortage of workers, and 18.2% answered that the situation is causing an "inadequate" level of medical services.

The answer, their workloads "increased" compared to the previous year, accounted for 63.1%, and 77.6% answered that they have "worked" overtime without pay. Among public health nurses, midwives, and nurses, 82.7% answered they "want to quit their jobs". The respondents who answered that they worked overtime beyond the upper permissible limit (45 hours per month) accounted for 4.0%. The percentage of those who answered they did not use paid holidays even to the lower limit of 5 days per year was 6.1%,

The nurses present at the press conference stated: I work a night shift up to 13 times a month, exceeding the government-set monthly standard of up to eight times; due to the chronic labor shortage, we have no choice but to cut down on nursing care in order to finish our tasks on time; and unreasonably hard shifts associated with a shortfall in the number of nurses are leading many young nurses and nurses raising children to leave their jobs, which creates a further shortage of workers.