Children's hospitals sound the alarm: warning of fatal consequences

Created: 2022-12-19Updated: 2022-12-19 13:51

View of the corridor of the intensive care unit of a children's hospital.

© Christoph Soeder/dpa/symbol image

For weeks we have been reading about overburdened children's hospitals in the country.

Now medical specialists from across the country are sharpening the tone.

They make it clear: in the end it is a matter of life and death for small patients.

Stuttgart - With dramatic words, the majority of children's hospitals in the south-west have made an appeal for help to the state government in view of the overload and staff shortages.

The system has been broken for years, urgent pediatric surgical interventions are being postponed, according to a protest letter from specialists from 23 of the approximately 30 children's clinics in the country, which is available to the German Press Agency.

"For us, there is a specific fear that we will send the wrong children home in overcrowded emergency rooms and without capacity in the wards, with potentially fatal consequences - that one of these children will not wake up in the morning."

The situation in the clinics has been tense for weeks, partly due to a significant increase in respiratory diseases caused by RS viruses.

The respiratory disease is particularly dangerous for premature babies, infants and young children.

They could get severe pneumonia.

The letter was sent on Monday to the state government, the state parliamentary groups and the board members and management of the children's hospitals involved.

The large number of acutely ill children and the many chronically ill patients led to a high need for nursing and medical measures, the letter says.

"This need goes beyond the limits of what our current system of inpatient pediatric and adolescent medicine is able to provide." wherever possible, criticize the doctors.

They write that they can no longer live up to their responsibility for patient care.

The specialists write that the reduction in beds in children's and youth clinics must come to an end.

Pediatric medicine is heavily dependent on seasonal factors and emergency admissions.

Anyone who calls for an average occupancy rate of over 75 percent must also tell the population that children would then be left behind in acute emergencies.

"Just as the fire brigade is not paid for their work, so maintenance costs in child and adolescent medicine have to be financed without cost recovery or profit orientation."

The specialists are also calling for the situation of nurses in child and adolescent medicine to be improved - by relieving them of administrative tasks, better remuneration, a better staff ratio and more development and promotion opportunities.

In addition, the remuneration system must be reformed.

“We will continue to fight with full commitment for our small and large patients,” write the doctors.

"It is now part of this to stand up against the chronic underfunding and disadvantage of child and adolescent medicine." dpa