SVT Nyheter has investigated the proportion of hours performed by part-time assistant nurses and care assistants in September this year.
The municipalities we have looked at are the 50 largest that have municipal elderly care.
More than every five hours were performed by hourly staff in 23 of the 50 municipalities, the review shows.
Solna had the highest share.
There was more than every three hours performed by an hourly employee in September this year.
- It's very much.
If every five or three hours is performed by hourly staff, it is a problem, says Marta Szebehely who is professor emeritus of social work at Stockholm University and who has made one of the reports that formed the basis for the Corona Commission's first interim report.
Involves risk
Marta Szebehely is critical of the excessive use of hourly employees.
It is partly an unsafe form of work, and partly it can involve a risk from an infection point of view as many hourly employees work at several different workplaces.
It can also mean poorer continuity for colleagues and for the elderly, she says.
- To be able to provide good care, you have to know the people you work with and if you have many hourly employees, there will be poorer continuity, she says.
Does a high proportion of hours of hourly employees automatically mean that you have a low staff continuity?
- No, theoretically you can imagine that you have hourly employees who work very many hours, but then it is an unauthorized use of hourly employees, I would like to say.
"Structural problem"
Johan Fritzell, who is a professor at Karolinska Institutet's center for elderly research, also thinks that many municipalities have a far too high proportion of hours of hourly employees.
- However, it is important to remember that it is not the hourly employees who are at fault, but this is a structural problem, he says.