The staff of the Asklepios Clinic in Gauting expressed their displeasure on Tuesday.
There was not only criticism of politics, but also of the company itself.
Gauting
– The staff at the Asklepios Pulmonary Clinic has a half-hour lunch break.
150 employees used these on Tuesday to protest against the ever-increasing tasks that nurses and doctors are being burdened with.
"We have to point out that we don't want to support everything that the group and politicians do," said Works Council Chairman Dr.
Jürgen Sklarek in the meeting, which took place in the parking lot - deliberately outside the clinic grounds.
There was applause for that.
It was one of the first protest actions of this kind in the group, which operates 19 specialist clinics, 13 psychiatric clinics and 41 rehabilitation clinics in addition to 36 hospitals throughout Germany.
The resentment was expressly not directed against the Gautingen clinic management.
"The managing directors on site cannot influence the decisions," says Sklarek.
It should be noted that this was not a strike: it was the works council and not the union that called for the “active lunch break”.
Service forces are terminated in rows
Sklarek, who has worked at the clinic for 30 years and is the second mayor of the municipality, made it clear that he had only sought an internal conversation.
In his speech with the megaphone, he reported a call to a high-ranking employee at Asklepios in Hamburg.
"It was said that the corresponding directive came from the group management," he said.
"That's why we have no choice but to go public and make it clear that things can't go on like this."
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The problem is that the introduction of the care flat rate only finances positions in care that are directly related to patient care.
As a result, Asklepios decided to fire service employees – mostly from the low-wage sector.
Tasks such as reception, service, pick-up and delivery service are extremely important for a functioning clinic.
"These non-professional tasks are now taken over by the nurses," says Sklarek.
Many of them are frustrated and consider quitting the job.
In Gauting, too, the consequences of the current corporate strategy have already been experienced.
When the reception staff was reduced, nurses had to fill in at weekends and at night.
Doctors are busy half the time bureaucracy
The same applies to doctors, who at some point decided to enter the profession because they want to be there for patients.
This is only possible to a limited extent.
"40 to 50 percent of our working time is occupied with documentation," explained the chairman of the works council.
"It can't be." In practice, this means that optimal patient care is no longer guaranteed.
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"To make matters worse, some of the IT provided by the group does not work at all due to a lack of server capacity," explained Dr.
Uwe Grützner, Senior Physician for Thoracic Surgery.
The result: Doctors have to make handwritten notes during rounds, for example, which are later laboriously transferred to the system.
The training of young medical professionals is also suffering.
"You become a good doctor by working with patients and not by filling out forms," said Sklarek.
He called for the hiring of ward secretaries and medical assistants.
The decision-makers in politics are too far away
Ulrike Hajredini, Deputy Chairwoman of the Works Council in Gauting and member of the Group Works Council, reported that these problems do not only occur in Gauting, but also in Asklepios clinics throughout Germany.
"It's worse elsewhere, it's frightening at times," she says.
In other houses, for example, nurses would also have to clean the beds or take over the radiology.
Christian Ketscher, also a member of the works council, came to the conclusion: "Political decision-makers are much too far removed from practice".
The works council expressly reserves the right to repeat the active lunch break: "If things continue like this, there will be another protest," explained Sklarek.
The employees once again applauded this.
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