This year started with a clear sign that things were getting better in healthcare. Nurses around Finland were reporting that they felt like they were finally approaching staffing levels that felt sustainable. Finnish healthcare providers were actively working on reaching a staffing level of 0.7 care providers / patient and it really looked like we were finally making progress and getting ahead in a sustainable way to battle the shortage of healthcare workers in Finland.

As many private companies and wellbeing areas / service counties increasingly said no to using borrowed workforce due to the immense costs that came along with that many of said companies went out of business which provided a further influx of nurses to the healthcare system. While this meant a drop in demand for recruitment services offered by Silk Road our company saw it as a positive thing at the end of the day. It was the goal we had all been working towards. Solving the shortage of healthcare workers to ensure the guarantee of healthcare services in the future. 

On the 16^th of April 2024 the Finnish government unveiled further spending cuts aiming to save an additional 1.6 billion euros. The healthcare sector was sadly once again heavily hit by these spending cuts resulting in, among other things, a cancelation of the 0.7 care providers / patient goal and lowering the current staffing requirement of 0.656 care providers / patient to 0.6.  

These decisions have resulted in many healthcare providers needing to rethink their staffing and recruitment goals. This has directly affected Silk Road and led to us having to place many recruits who were planned for deployment within 2024 on temporary hold to align with a new deployment date in 2025.  

Silk Road has had to make the difficult decision to implement a recruitment pause. We will need to wait with admitting new recruits into our program until those who have been put on hold can be re-instated. Currently our best estimate would be a resumption of active direct recruitment around the beginning of 2025.

If you are currently in our language training program, you might be affected by having your group put on hold for a few weeks or months. If this happens our language training partner will let you and the rest of your batch know of the pause. Deployment timelines might also be delayed if you were planned for deployment around the end of 2024. We are working hard to make sure we can deploy everyone even though there might be some delays in the initial deployment date.

If you are residing and working in a country other than your home country, you are most likely there based on a work-based visa or residence permit. We recommend that you start looking into the possibility of extending your current visa in case you find yourself in a batch that is delayed. We recommend all our recruits to have a visa validity of 1+ years when joining our program or ensure they can renew/extend their current visa to be valid for 1+ year.  

As most of our expat applicants are Filipinos and Filipino law differs slightly from most other countries, I will base my answer on the perspective of a Filipino. If you are a Filipino and your visa will run out and you are forced to go back to the Philippines, you will not be able to continue the recruitment process with Silk Road directly. If you hold a BSN degree from the Philippines or an NC2 caregiving certificate from the Philippines, you can apply to our local Filipino partner Topmake International Manpower Services and continue your recruitment process through them. If you hold a caregiving certificate which was not attained in the Philippines, you will not be able to continue your recruitment process through Topmake International Manpower Services.  

Silk Road will continue our recruitment program as normal with the exceptions of new batches no longer starting regularly. If you have not yet joined the Silk Road recruitment program, then there will be a waiting time of a few months before you will be able to be accepted. We are following the situation carefully and hopefully we can start accepting the first new batches to start around August 2024. 

Silk Road will also look to expand into new areas of recruitment which will open new avenues and possibilities for professionals looking to live and work in Finland.  

While the staffing requirement has been lowered, thereby creating a dip in demand for new healthcare workers, we are certain that the demand will increase again. 
 
Firstly, In the municipal sector, 26% of nurses, 31% of public health nurses and 47% of middle directors in nursing will retire before 2030. These nurses and healthcare professionals need to be replaced at a pace which we are not currently matching. 
 
Secondly, the government decisions will lead to an increased workload for many nurses and caregivers around Finland. Once again making the profession more taxing and lead to more dissatisfaction amongst healthcare professionals. Sadly this dissatisfaction will show itself in the form of higher personnel turn-over rates.  
 
Finally, even if the staffing ratio were never lifted and would remain at 0.6 care providers / patient, Finland still faces the fact that there are increasingly more elderly people in need of care every single year. This is a fact that cannot be changed with government decisions and budget cuts and will bring with it ever-growing needs for more healthcare professionals. When this need once again arises Silk Road will be there to meet it head on with the help of you, our amazing community of healthcare heroes. 

We want to end this blog post with some more personal words. We want to thank you all for supporting Silk Road in its endeavors to create a win-win-win program for us, you, and the employers that we work with. We will continue to strive towards our goals of creating the best possible pathway for work-based integration to Finland and help to alleviate the shortage of healthcare workers. Even though this current situation will bring with it delays in our program, we hope you will stick with us and that we can welcome you here in Finland just a bit later than originally planned!  
 
We will use this time to further enhance our processes and have actively started collecting recruit feedback on what we can further improve on. This will ensure that you will have an even better experience once making your way to Finland! Together we will get through this period of slow downs. Sooner than you know it you will find yourself waking up in the world’s happiest country! 

See you soon!