A group of foreign healthcare workers, who were dismissed by the wellbeing services county of North Savo, have accused the welfare authority of serious misconduct.
The authority terminated the employment contracts of 10 nurses and two doctors, all of foreign backgrounds, during their probationary period.
In a statement, the county said the decision was due to the workers' lack of professional competence as well as their poor Finnish language skills.
However, Yle has interviewed five of the dismissed workers and they each reject the county's claim that they were dismissed because of a lack of professional competence.
"I don’t think the reason for the dismissal was my skills, but something that is more difficult to prove: discrimination," one of the group said.
Yle has not named any of the five workers in this article because doing so could hinder their future job prospects, but their identities are known to Yle.
Sami Remes, a spokesperson for the North Savo wellbeing services county, denied earlier this week that discrimination played any part in the decision to terminate the workers' contracts. Yle asked Remes for an interview for this article, but he declined.
In the three videos below, the voice of one of the nurses has been altered to protect their identity. Yle has given the interviewee the alias 'Mary'.
Nurses: No chance to show skills
The North Savo regional authority hired a group of foreign healthcare workers last year as part of an international recruitment experiment, which also involved the region's ELY Centre as well as the recruitment company BBI Finland.
The nurses interviewed by Yle said they consider the authority's reasons for terminating their contracts to be grossly unfair, as they were prevented by Finnish law from carrying out some of the tasks nurses are supposed to perform.
This limitation was due to the fact that doctors and nurses must receive specific permits from Finland's National Supervisory Authority for Health and Welfare (Valvira) before they can independently treat patients.
One of the criteria to receive these permits is that the worker has passed the Finnish YKI (National Certificate of Language Proficiency) test.
While working on the wards of hospitals in the North Savo region, the nurses were permitted to perform tasks such as take patients to the bathroom or help them sit up in bed.
"I asked the staff if I could distribute medication, and they said that was not allowed yet. What if I hadn’t asked and had done something that I wasn’t yet allowed to do by law," one of the nurses noted.
The nurses also carried out more clinical work, such as inserting an IV cannula, but always with a work partner.
Before coming to Finland, the nurses had recently graduated from a nursing programme in Poland.
'Mary' told Yle that she was concerned before she arrived in the country about Finland's plans to tighten regulations on workers from outside the EU, among other worries, and she wanted to drop out of the project.
She recounted to Yle how she sent an email to the welfare authority expressing her concerns, but she was told by a representative that everything would be fine.
Yle has seen a number of email exchanges between the nurses and the welfare authority, and they give extra credence to the nurses' account of events.
The workers said they feel they were lured to Finland under false pretences, and they were then left to their own devices once they were in the country. One of the group told Yle that the experience felt more like human trafficking than a legitimate recruitment process.
“From day one, it felt like the team had already decided they couldn’t work with us. And it wasn’t because of our skills, but because of our background and appearance,” one of the nurses said.
Mentoring programme cut after one month
Once the group of nurses arrived in Finland last year to begin work, they were each assigned a work mentor by the North Savo wellbeing services county.
However, the nurses told Yle that this mentoring programme was stopped after just one month — even though the newcomers felt they still needed help.
In addition, the nurses had been told that their mentors would speak English. The mentors, in turn, had been instructed to speak only Finnish.
Some of the group also told Yle that they received almost no feedback on their work prior to the termination of their contracts. Others, on the other hand, had received praise as well as encouragement to continue in the same way.
In its justification for the decision to terminate their contracts, the North Savo welfare authority said that there were concerns for patient safety.
One of the group noted that this concern could have been expressed much earlier if there were genuine risks to patient safety.
Nurses felt isolated
The nurses interviewed by Yle also described a very difficult work environment, with many of their colleagues displaying a negative attitude towards the newcomers.
Some of their new colleagues said very openly that they did not want to work with them, and a few even said outright that they did not like foreigners.
"They often only wanted to work with other Finns, and they did not talk to us or give us any tasks. It felt like we were isolated," one nurse explained.
One of the group said the situation started to have a significant effect on her mental health, and she began to have panic attacks before the start of her shift.
Participation in experiment cost Mary 20,000 euros
Many of the group interviewed by Yle say that they are prepared to accept that their language skills were the reason why their contracts were terminated.
However, the North Savo county's decision to publicly call their professional competence into question — via its own statement about the terminations — deeply offended them.
The group also found it insulting that in Finnish media reports about the terminations, only Zimbabwean nurses were mentioned, even though there were other nationalities among those dismissed.
Mary told Yle that participating in this international recruitment experiment cost her about 20,000 euros.
"Many of my friends warned me not to come to Finland, but I said that the employer seemed good and was committed to us. But unfortunately, the people who warned me were right. Finland turned out to be a very hostile place," she said.
