Thursday, November 21, 2013

German Nursing

Last night, I ended up watching a piece off HR (the Hessen public-run TV network).  The show?  Der Nachste, Bitte: Pflegenostand Krankenhaus.

It was a docu-news piece.  Half the time....these run off into odd directions and you'd like to ask forty additional questions because they never got very deep into the topic.

Last night's piece touched on the German hospital business....from inside.  It was a 45-minute piece over nurses at a cancer treatment hospital in Berlin, the patient's view of the nurses, and the amount of effort put into a forty-hour-a-week job.

These are professional folks who run at maximum from the minute they arrive at the hospital, until the minute they leave.  There is no slow-period like you'd expect.

My general opinion is that German nurses take their duty as a personal thing, and if there were a thousand things to accomplish in the normal day.....they'd do it.

Between the scenes, you can sense a whine here and there.  They aren't happy about the hours, the calls to fill in when some nurse is sick, or the atmosphere where your customers might not be around tomorrow when you return to work....meaning they passed during the night.  It's not a pleasant job.....but they are drawn to it for some odd reason.

From an American prospective, staying in any hospital is a miserable experience.  Getting the right doctor is usually the highest priority.  After viewing this TV episode....maybe getting the right nurse matters a bit too.

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