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Staff shortages, viruses and accidents are pushing emergency rooms to the limit of their capacities. A look at the University Hospital Basel.
It’s quiet in an emergency at the University Hospital Basel. No sign of hectic. The head of the emergency center, Roland Bingisser, guides us through the ward: “Here we have severe anemia with suspected blood cancer, discovered today, here is pneumonia, there is an unclear infection with a fever of 40 degrees and here we have a dog bite on the right lower leg , unknown dog.”
The shift manager is located in the middle of the emergency room. That’s where Corina Blumer sits, she is the nursing shift manager: “I distribute the patients to the places and organize beds in the house. It’s my job to make sure the store runs on the nursing side.” It’s a big operation: every year, 40,000 people arrive on foot, by car or taxi in an emergency, 15,000 by ambulance or helicopter.
life-saving measures
On the one hand, there are the worst cases, those who have to go to the trauma room: “This is where patients come who need life-saving measures immediately, for example after a car accident that causes them to roll over, if they have an aorta rupture, or if their heart is no longer pumping .» On average, the shock room is used ten times a day.
It is paradoxical that the healthiest patients are the most dissatisfied.
On the other side of the emergency are those who don’t feel urgent: A sprain, a swollen wrist, an upset stomach. Sometimes you have to wait a long time there: “We have a massive overload. Then we talk to the patients and calm them down. It is paradoxical that these patients are the most dissatisfied, even though they are the healthiest,” says Bingisser. And yet he resists the fact that the trivial cases are the big problem.
“More Violence”
What worries him is the increase in severe cases. Today, medicine can do much more, so do more. In addition, the world has become more brutal: “There is more violence, more stabbings, more gunshot wounds. We treat these cases in the shock room.”
And Bingisser goes on to say: You would have many more older people on the emergency, also from nursing homes: “Nursing homes also have a staffing problem. They used to have more qualified nursing staff. There used to be more general practitioners who would visit nursing homes and say something didn’t need emergency treatment.”
Legend:
For the chief physician in emergencies at the University Hospital Basel, it is not the minor cases that are the problem, but the increase in acts of violence.
KEYSTONE/Georgios Kefalas
All of this now has to be paid for by the staff on the emergency, says Bingisser. “The conditions are impossible at the moment. Far too many patients for far too few staff. You despair because we can’t meet our demands.”
It just never ends. You can hardly breathe anymore.
Stefan Erny, who works as a nursing specialist on an emergency, also confirms this: “It’s about the number of patients. It just never ends. You can hardly breathe anymore.”
The employees often have to pay for what goes wrong elsewhere. For example, if a patient has to be transferred from the emergency room to another hospital, but no place can be found, says Bingisser. In addition, there is a shortage of nursing staff and doctors. The shift work and the many weekend shifts are paid too little.
For Roland Bingisser, however, it remains a dream job: every day is different. And teamwork is fun. It works on the emergency in the University Hospital Basel. That’s why it’s quiet even on hectic days: “The more professional the business is, the quieter it is.”