Sitting for hours in the emergency room with sick children or spending the night in the hospital corridors: the situation is very tense due to the wave of respiratory infections, a lack of beds and few staff. This even leads to violence, as the President of the German Red Cross Hasselfeldt now reports.
According to the President of the German Red Cross (DRK), Gerda Hasselfeldt, the number of attacks on hospital staff is increasing in view of the overloaded children's hospitals. Hasselfeldt told the "Rheinische Post": "Cases of threats or the actual use of psychological and physical violence against health workers are increasing." Due to the shortage of staff and the time pressure, good involvement of the parents is often "only insufficiently possible, which in turn leads to a loss of information, the accumulation of complaints and growing tension on all sides," stressed Hasselfeldt. At the same time, parents with sick children sometimes have to sit for hours in the emergency rooms or sick children have to spend the night in hospital corridors.
However, it is hardly possible to remedy the situation in the short term, added the DRK President. "As far as the scarce human and material resources are concerned, sustainable, secure financing is required," demanded Hasselfeldt. The nursing staff urgently need to be relieved.
Pediatricians had raised the alarm in many children's hospitals in the past few days because of an emergency. One of the current reasons is a wave of respiratory infections. But the capacity has also been falling for years. According to the Federal Statistical Office, between 2018 and 2020 the number of beds for the treatment of children and adolescents fell by 455. Nursing staff are often lacking to utilize the available beds.
Health Minister Karl Lauterbach promised help. The Bundestag had decided that there should be an additional 300 million euros each for children's hospitals in 2023 and 2024. A reform of hospital reimbursement is to follow. According to the Society for Child and Adolescent Medicine, the number of beds in paediatrics fell by a third between 1991 and 2017. During the same period, the annual number of cases increased from an average of 900,000 treated children and adolescents to more than one million.
According to the President of the Professional Association of Pediatricians, Thomas Fischbach, Lauterbach's proposed changes to the law come too late. "We now need a procurement campaign pushed by politicians in order to get fever juice, certain antibiotics and other preparations for small children that have become rare in an emergency, as was the case at the beginning of the corona pandemic."
