Major overload – doctor: ‘Patients are on their way to death’

Three-quarters of hospital doctors are constantly under stress. This was the result of the study of nearly 1,900 doctors in Vienna’s hospitals, which was carried out by Peter Hajek on behalf of the Medical Association.

Hell is an understatement
“To say the bed situation is hell is an understatement. Patients are literally lying in the aisle, ready to die. We don’t even have time to write threat reports. We have to triage like it wasn’t even in the days of Covid,” Medical Association vice president and child psychiatrist Stefan Ferenci reads from a message sent to him by a colleague from a community hospital on duty over the weekend. And: “The doctors are no longer on the border, but already above it.”

Stress levels are at an all-time high and job satisfaction is at an all-time low (22 percent). The reasons for the workload are the lack of nursing staff (77 percent), followed by bureaucratic activities and the lack of staff at doctors.

Christmas miracle
This also has consequences for the workload. Only eleven percent of the doctors surveyed said they could do it without overtime. Particularly dangerous: a quarter of the doctors in the hospital cannot comply with the legal rest periods (intermediate shifts). “This is a violation of labor law,” emphasizes Ferenci, who would like to see a Christmas miracle from city politicians: conversations at eye level, no trivialization of the problems and concrete, timely measures, such as administrative staff or a pool of externals. who are in the hospital in winter, for example, boarding. All this could be resolved quickly and would make a huge difference, because now the hospital doctors would not receive a salary, but a compensation for pain and suffering.