Munich (dpa / lby) - In view of the sometimes dramatic situations in children's clinics and pediatric practices, Bavaria's Health Minister Klaus Holetschek considers deviations from the minimum staffing level to be justifiable. "The clinics can refer to the exceptional circumstances of the relevant federal regulation," said the CSU politician on Thursday after a crisis meeting with doctors and infectiologists in Munich. The problem lies less in the medical field than in the lack of nursing staff. The clinics should make the best possible use of the available capacities and take all reasonable measures to improve the situation.
In order to relieve the burden on paediatricians, schools and after-school care centers should refrain from submitting medical certificates for sick children. That only holds up the doctors unnecessarily, "such things have to go now," said Holetschek. The doctors in the practices and clinics would now have to take care of the children and not the bureaucracy.
"In some cases it can make sense to temporarily use nursing staff from adult wards so that the pediatric nurses can concentrate on the younger patients," emphasized Holetschek. Other conceivable measures include placing the children in a day clinic overnight, critically reviewing all hospital admissions and ultimately also postponing interventions that can be postponed.
Doctors and medical professionals are currently sounding the alarm because practices and clinics for children are extremely overcrowded. The reason for this is severe respiratory diseases, from which many children are currently suffering. The young patients have mostly been infected with the RS virus, which can be particularly dangerous for infants and small children. Influenza and pneumonia are also common. Doctors expect the wave of infections to continue for several weeks - but the capacities in the clinics are already exhausted.
Holetschek also appealed to all nurses who are currently no longer working in the profession to help in the crisis: "The current RSV wave is hitting the professional nurses with full force - this applies in particular to nannies! Every additional helping hand counts ." Despite the difficult situation, nobody has to worry that sick children will not be treated.
