Dhe cold season has begun, oncological and neurological patients need to be cared for – but many nurses are ill, work part-time or have even retired. That is why the situation in the intensive care units for children is currently very tense. Professor Ursula Felderhoff-Müser, Vice President of the German Society for Child and Adolescent Medicine, on the situation in German children’s hospitals.
Is there an acute overload in the children’s intensive care area?
When we talk to colleagues, there is hardly a children’s intensive care unit that does not regularly have to close beds due to staff shortages. And we actually have the problem that doctors who are actually needed at the bedside spend hours on the phone with the intensive care units in the entire area in order to accommodate the children elsewhere. We also have to transfer children to clinics up to 200 kilometers away. This is of course very difficult for the families when the child is in intensive care and then so far away from home.