On the ground in the AKH – This is what patient care in Vienna will look like in 2023!

Shock photos from the Vienna General Hospital that leave you speechless. A patient is lying on the floor with the catheter hanging loose. Others eke out an existence under sheet tents. A shame.

For months, doctors have been raising the alarm about the conditions in local hospitals. There is talk of corridor beds, postponed operations with long-term consequences and a collapse in emergency medicine. Photos leaked to “Krone” But the recordings leaked to “Krone” point to even worse conditions. And the dozens of danger displays and the calls for help from the staff themselves cannot prepare you for these pictures. We are talking about the conditions on station 19.C – the clinical department for orthopedics and trauma surgery in the AKH … There are frail people with urinary bags on mattresses on the floor or – as a photo shows – even on bare linoleum. They are only protected by thin sheets. But from what or what exactly are they supposed to protect? In front of the bright light? There can no longer be any talk of patient dignity with these photos: “The mildest means” At the AKH, this procedure of accommodation is called “the mildest means” and is due to the nursing care. The reasoning is as follows: “Since people who are torn from their familiar surroundings by an accident are more likely to develop acute delirium and thus endanger themselves by falling out of bed, this is nursing care.” Buckle up your seat belt or lie on the floor ?The alternative, according to the hospital, would be to strap patients to the bed. Since you don’t want these “unpleasant” conditions under any circumstances, sick people are transported to the floor in the field of view of the nurses. A spokeswoman says to the “Krone”: “Patients with cognitive impairments who are accommodated on two mattresses without a bed can be monitored without endangering themselves and without the need for more unpleasant, freedom-restricting measures.” It is a fact, they say : Any measures would be taken with care and coordinated with relatives. What remains is one question: Who wants to see their mum, dad, grandma, grandpa, siblings vegetating on the floor of a hospital corridor?
source site-12