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Thomas van den Hoofen is Director of Health Care at the Münster University Clinic. This is the man who has the difficult task of dealing with a shortage of nurses and caregivers. “Since last weekend, we have had many more COVID-19 patients, so now we have to relocate staff,” he said. He reschedules daily the work hours of the 3,000 nurses at the university clinic. Changes occur constantly in the distribution of beds in different compartments.
When that wasn’t enough, Thomas van den Hoofen picked up the phone and began to persuade people on the clinic’s medical staff who had previously worked as caregivers and were now employed in other fields to return to work in the intensive care unit. , even be only temporary. “If I can convince them, naturally we will qualify them further. It is true that these people cannot completely replace our caregivers with the intensive care unit, but for us their help remains invaluable,” said the director.
Thomas van den Hoofen himself is not just in his office. Whenever an urgent need arises, she makes a point of helping caregivers. His work is well known because he was a nurse for 15 years. It is only three years since he took over as director of health in Münster. He says that the coronary crisis has been a great challenge. “The stress is total, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. What we are facing now in Germany, I have never experienced before,” he admits. That is why he looks with bewilderment at the protesters who went to Leipzig for a massive protest against measures to limit the pandemic. “I understand a lot of things, but this case just throws me off balance,” says the director.
Capacities are “yellow”
“It is already felt that there is a significant increase in the number of patients in intensive care units, and by Christmas this will probably deepen even more. And then there will be a shortage of not only caregivers but also doctors,” predicts van den Hoofen and rushed to the next emergency. However, he said earlier that he would recommend to Health Minister Jens Spahn to issue a clear directive that coronavirus patients have absolute priority and that all knee or hip surgery should be postponed indefinitely. In Germany, these are among the most common operations.
And although Thomas van den Hoofen has an insight into the intensive care sector at the Münster University Hospital, Dr. Christian Karajanis knows the situation throughout Germany in depth. Karajanis is the author of the idea for an intensive care registry, which was created years ago. In a coronavirus pandemic, this record is simply invaluable.
When a patient has an urgent need for artificial respiration in an intensive care unit and the beds in the nearest clinic are occupied, the electronic registry immediately sends the data on which other clinics have free intensive care beds.
“Our Society for Intensive and Emergency Medicine in Germany created this registry at the time of the first wave of swine flu. Then we hadn’t used it for a long time, but the Robert Koch Institute encouraged us to reactivate it, so the system we covers the data for the 1,300 emergency hospitals in Germany, now it shows us a symbolic traffic light: red means that a clinic does not have available capacity, yellow indicates that they are running out and green indicates the availability of free beds “, explains the Dr. Karajanis. , who runs the pulmonary intensive care unit at the Cologne-Merheim Hospital
Currently, the situation in the country’s emergency hospitals is still under control: more than 3,000 intensive care beds are occupied and some 8,000 are still available. However, the intensive care specialist is concerned that the number of new infected and hospitalized by coronavirus is currently higher than in the most dramatic weeks of spring. “The days when we could calmly look at what awaits us are long gone. For the moment, our intensive capabilities are in yellow,” he said.
And this is mainly due to the fact that there is a serious shortage of staff in the country: in intensive care units there are between 3,500 and 4,000 nurses. Germany can equip new fully functional intensive care beds in record time, but where can you find staff for them?
The reasons for this shortage are known: relatively low wages, but high responsibility, constant shift work, even on weekends, and insufficient recognition and respect for this work by society. Health Minister Jens Spahn was desperately trying to recruit medical staff and caregivers from abroad, even before the coronavirus pandemic broke out.
The mood among caregivers is deteriorating
The results of the latest survey conducted among nurses in the intensive care field do not sound encouraging: 97 percent of them do not believe that Germany has enough staff to cope with the second wave of the pandemic, and almost half of those surveyed says they are not as motivated as they were in the spring. 93%, on the other hand, fear that their working conditions will deteriorate even more in the coming months.
Berbel Bryman has similar concerns. The 47-year-old nurse works in the intensive care unit of the Münster University Clinic. “We are already working until we are tired. And if that doesn’t change, the system will quickly collapse,” he said. Bryman knows very well what he’s talking about. He has been working in the intensive care unit since 1998.
“We all face tension and stress that we have never experienced before. Both emotionally and physically,” said the nurse. He adds that the profile of the patients in his ward is also changing. Today, more and more young people are staying there, like young parents in their 30s with no previous illnesses.
“We keep asking ourselves: what else awaits us in Germany?” Says Berbel Bryman. She and her colleagues are tired, nervous, and worried. The mood in society is similar.
And Dr. Christian Karajanis confirms: “The mood in the clinics is getting worse.” According to him, Germany urgently needs to develop a strategy so that 20% of caregivers do not leave their jobs next summer. “Then the hospitals simply will not be able to function normally,” said the expert.
Author: Oliver Piper
Germany
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