Staff shortage

“Please speak nicely”

Maria Camila Mantilla-Florez and Sofia San Martin-Tordecilla are now highly valued nursing staff. The Salzburg regional hospitals recruited them in Colombia.

(Bild: Tschepp Markus)

Two young nurses took the challenges posed by their new home in Salzburg with humor. The Colombian nurses received support with their integration. 

They laugh a lot and radiate joie de vivre. This characteristic helped the two young women with their integration in Salzburg. Sofia San Martin-Tordecilla and Maria Camila Mantilla-Florez have been working at the regional hospital in Mülln for around a year. Their home country of Colombia, where they studied nursing, is thousands of kilometers away. The "Krone" asked how the nurses, who were recruited through an agency, are doing.

"Please speak nicely"
"Very well. But the language was really difficult at first," says Sofia. "I'm from Colombia and new here. Please speak slowly and beautifully," she told her patients at the beginning. Now that's no longer necessary. Sometimes she even slips out a dialect word. "I like it here. And as a woman, I'm allowed to go out in the evening. You can't do that in Colombia, but everything is safe here," says Camila happily. Her arrival at Salzburg airport still left her shivering. "It was April and very cold. I didn't have anything warm with me," she laughs today.

Foreign workers alleviate staff shortage
In recent months, the Colombian women have made friends with Salzburg's culture, food and winter. They are even planning a ski course. Foreign staff are to ease the shortage of nurses. We are supporting 50 nurses from Colombia who arrived last year," explains Carina Hörack, who is responsible for relocation management. Three employees and several volunteers put their heart and soul into integrating staff like Sofia and Camila.

"Do you only eat bread and cake here in Salzburg?"
"At the beginning, they asked if we only eat bread and cake here," recalls one of them, retired qualified nurse Maria Andrasi-Humer, with a laugh. Her protégés are highly valued: Camila as a surgical assistant in the operating room and Sofia as a qualified nurse with the patients. Their boss even says: "Sofia is my benchmark. That's how a nurse should be."