Poppi for health people to get KD-politician

Hundreds of health workers want to venture into politics in the fall. The county council and regional elections is the Christian Democrats who have received the most from the services professions to get involved.


On the charts for the autumn elections in Sweden's 21 county councils and regions are services professions are well represented. Among doctors, nurses and midwives are the Christian Democrats with the most candidates in county and regional elections. Political scientist Magnus Hagevi at Linnaeus University in Växjö has researched the connection between religion and politics, and is not surprised that KD has many politicians who work in health care.

- I think it's about two things. One is that the party trying to brand themselves against health and social care issues. The second is the party's connection to the church and especially the Free Church. There is a clear commitment to health and social care within the Free Church and the Church in general, says Magnus Hagevi.

That it is precisely in the academic health professions KD find many politicians amazes him either.

- The Free Church, many people go on to higher education and in the group is over-represented health professions, says Magnus Hagevi.

The surgeon Stefan Redéen, who works at the University Hospital in Linköping, recognize themselves in the picture. He is both engaged in a free church and county council candidate for the Christian Democrats in Östergötland.

- Many people with Christian values ​​work in healthcare and want to work to improve the patients who are our fellow human beings. It is about ensuring the commitment to one's neighbor as important, he says.

Besides the desire to work for Christian values​​, it was the experience of working life that drove him into politics.

- What I have seen in my work as a surgeon is the need for priorities in health care. We need a health care priority to those patients with the greatest medical need, not those who shout loudest, says Stefan Redéen.

He says that all politicians, regardless of party affiliation, listening to him when he talks about his experiences from 25 years in the medical profession.

- But we should learn to sit on two chairs. You need to distinguish between everyday clinical practice and the role of politicians. When I am a politician, I must have other glasses on me than when I work as a surgeon, says Stefan Redéen

As for the staff nurses, it is instead the Social Democrats and the Left that has the most candidates in the upcoming elections.

- I'm all about that there is a class conflict as one engages the outside, says Magnus Hagevi.

In the other four occupational groups as Dagens Medicin has identified there is a clear bourgeois majority of council candidates. Unions Health Professionals, Medical Association and Physiotherapist groups are all three politically independent. But both Vårdförbundet chairman Sineva Ribeiro and Medical Association President Heidi Stenmyren have theories about why most of their professions who have become involved in county politics has chosen to be a candidate for any of the four Alliance parties.

- The Social Democrats have been difficult to comment specifically about our professions without also talking about the nurses' role. So I can understand that some of our members do not want to get involved there because of it, says Sineva Ribeiro, president of the Association of Health.

Heidi Stenmyren think many doctors have estimated the alliance's health care policy.

- It may have to do with the alliance has spurred questions about care choices that involved many doctors. The Alliance has made many reforms in the health sector which has centered on the patient's participation, which I also believe that many have appreciated, she says.