Status: 04/25/2021 5:19 a.m.
–
–
–
More than 5000 Covid-19 patients are currently fighting for their lives in German intensive care units. Doctors and nurses reach their physical and emotional limits.
From Klaus Weidmann,
ARD capital studio
–
–
–
Germany’s hospitals are well equipped for a pandemic. In an emergency, 10,000 additional intensive care beds can be provided. Rooms and equipment are available.
–
–
–
The only problem: there is a lack of staff. The situation is already tense, especially in the Corona hotspots such as Thuringia and Saxony, but also in large cities such as Cologne, Munich and Leipzig.
Patients are younger and stay longer
The University Clinic in Cologne had to prepare for a rapid increase in seriously ill corona patients weeks ago. 24 intensive care beds are normally available for heart surgery patients alone, ten of which are now being kept free for corona patients. The result: bypass or heart valve operations cannot take place as planned. “We keep a waiting list in the background with operations that we have postponed,” explains Thorsten Wahlers, Director of Cardiac and Thoracic Surgery.
The admitted corona patients are on average much younger than those during the first and second wave. And they stay longer. This places an enormous burden on the nursing staff, especially when the patients are artificially ventilated. Because the nurses have to turn the sick several times a day from the supine to the prone position and to the right or left. No hose or cable should come loose.
This is very stressful, especially because more than half of the seriously ill do not make it. Anette Segtrop is an experienced intensive care nurse, but she has never experienced anything like this:
You work on a patient for two weeks, give your all. And with Covid patients in particular, you often get the result: you lose the patient. It’s not easy to put up with. It makes you sad that you haven’t made it again.
Anette Segtrop, intensive care nurse at Cologne University Hospital
–
–
Intensive stress unevenly distributed
There is not a state of emergency everywhere in Germany. The intensive care register of the German Interdisciplinary Association for Intensive Care and Emergency Medicine (DIVI) clearly shows the regional differences at district level. Green districts still have enough intensive care beds, dark red means emergency care. More and more circles are dark red. Are ambulance transports to less polluted regions the solution?
Ambulance transport: a way out?
In individual cases, life can be saved. Seriously ill Covid-19 patients not only need the so-called ECMO (extracorporeal membrane oxygenation), which partially or completely takes over the patients’ respiratory functions. Above all, you need the experienced staff who can operate these devices. Then patient transports for corona patients make sense.
On April 16, for the first time, five corona intensive care patients from Thuringia were flown out by helicopter to special clinics to Hamburg, Bad Kissingen, Wolfsburg and Osnabrück. Michael Bauer, Director of Anesthesia and Intensive Care Medicine at the Jena University Hospital, coordinates these transfers: “We have a lot of difficult processes where we have our backs to the wall. Therapy options like ECMO have to be used. This is where we reach our limits.”
Michael Bauer, Clinic Director for Anesthesia and Intensive Care Medicine at the Jena University Hospital
–
–
“Large-scale extra work”
Bauer’s rounds begin at seven o’clock in the morning. He currently looks after 30 seriously ill corona patients. The average age is in their mid-50s, so they are no longer the very old. The vaccinations have already worked.
The hospital has imposed a complete ban on visits. A clinical psychologist arranges phone calls and video chats between corona patients and their relatives. Representatives of the press also no longer have access to the hospital. However, it’s exclusive to Report from Berlin Image material rotated.
Outside the clinic, Bauer says into the camera: “We have a lot of extra work. We mobilize whoever is willing to volunteer in the intensive care unit. Nursing staff – including general care – have been supporting us since last week also the Bundeswehr. ”
You can see more about this on Sunday,
04/25 in the report from Berlin at 6:05 p.m. in the first.
–
–
–
Intensive care carers and the grueling fight against Covid
Lena Sterz, WDR, 25.4.2021 · 06:02
–
–
–
