NordÖl - chronicle

The Nordic Council of Senior Physicians (NordÖl) was formed in 1980, mainly on the initiative of ÖF board member Carl-Axel Nilsson.

The reasons for establishing NordÖl included the following:

The focus, scope and standard of healthcare are essentially similar in the Nordic countries. The medical labor market is also common, based on a Nordic agreement on common rules for doctors' further education.

Nordic doctors thus have great common professional interests, in addition of course general cultural ones, etc. In order to protect and develop the professional community, the undersigned organizations have decided to establish an organization called the Nordic Council for Senior Doctors, NordÖl.

A quick review of the folders with NordÖl documents in ÖF's archive shows that the problems in the different countries show many similarities - albeit with a certain time difference. A problem, a question, a reform appears in one place and in a few years also in other places, perhaps with a certain changed focus and name but basically still the same. Our officials, for example Jes Foss and Leif Gustafsson, who have attended many NordÖl meetings, can certainly attest to this and give several examples of it. A typical example is the GP reform, which we in Sweden discussed on and off for at least 14 years, was introduced in the early 90s by the bourgeois government and was immediately abolished in 1994 by the new social democratic government. It was around the same time that the Norwegian GP reform was introduced. Today, in Sweden, we are in the process of reintroducing it under the name Familjeläkarsystem.

Other issues that have constantly returned to NordÖl's agenda are, of course, negotiation and agreement issues, conflicts with strikes and lockouts, new salary systems. In Sweden, we are now in full swing with introducing a purely individual salary system - whether it is the right medicine to correct and improve the salary development of the medical profession, the future will tell. Maybe in 5 to 10 years we will be back to a purely centralized pay system with pay grades and pay classes. But then we can still state that we have tried to do something about the wage leveling that has taken place since the 1970s, when the so-called 7 kroner reform was implemented with total wage and working time regulation for the medical profession.

We have also tried in NordÖl to make a survey and comparison of the medical profession's salary levels and general terms of employment, which of course turned out to be a daunting and almost impossible task.

Other very important topics of discussion over the years have been Healthcare policy and healthcare organisation. I have already mentioned the GP reforms. Equally pressing issues have been the various leadership reforms, two-part department management in Norway and Denmark, chief medical officer and operations manager reforms in Sweden, new healthcare legislation – in Sweden, away from detailed healthcare legislation to a more normative and target-driven healthcare legislation – savings and rationalisations in healthcare. We are still struggling with the organization and financing of healthcare. Achieving diversity in the production stage is still a long way off.

Questions that have also appeared many times on the agenda for the NordÖl meetings are the length and quality of medical education in the various countries. Both in terms of basic, further and continuing education/post-secondary education. We have discussed compulsory or voluntary specialist degrees.

It is also natural for trade unions to discuss employment protection and job security. LAS issues have been discussed many times. In 1988, Rolf Schöyen spoke about the Norwegian law on suspension of employment and service obligations. A lot of water has certainly flown under the bridges since then.

Patient rights and the patients' changed position have been dealt with in NordÖl. We have discussed care guarantees and second opinions many times.

Over the years, many legendary trustees have passed review at the NordöÖl meetings. Vagn Sele (who sometimes burst into song at dinner), Jan Söltoft and Erik Gert Jensen from Denmark. We fondly remember Rolf Schöyen, Tone Sparr, Rolf Kirchner and Einar Hysing from Norway. Timo Niinimäki, Björn Eklund, Martti Lalla and Pekka Antilla from Finland. Inge Hesselius, Carl-Axel Nilsson and Bengt Ehrenberg from Sweden.

On the white-collar side, Peer Wendelin and Jes Foss, Oddvar Brenden, Signe-Gerd Blindheim, Taisto Rautpalo and Leif Gustafsson have been around for a long time.

Also socially and culturally, the NordÖl meetings have been very pleasant and enriching.

We like to think back to the meetings in Ribe and now most recently in Copenhagen, the meeting in Turku with a 17th century dinner at Turku Castle, the meetings in Stavanger and Oslo with lunch at the restaurant at the small lighthouse in the Oslofjord and the Swedish meeting in 1992 which was moved to Reykjavik , where we drank "black death in the Blue Lagoon", already on the way from the airport to the hotel..

From the Swedish side, we hope that this year's meeting will be just as memorable and enjoyable. The prerequisites are there - we have a huge agenda attend the meeting. We have nice meeting participants and fellow travelers. Now it depends on ourselves how the outcome will be.

I would like to propose a toast to NordÖl and Nordic cooperation these days when so much is about European cooperation and the enlargement of the EU.

SKÅL!

2001-06-14/Leif Gustafsson