The proliferation of the omicron variant is exacerbating the shortage of staff in hospitals in Germany.
In a recent lightning survey by the German Hospital Society (DKG), almost three quarters of the clinics report higher staff shortages than is usual at this time of year, as reported by the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ/Saturday edition).
In more than every tenth hospital, the staff shortages are even significantly higher: Here, more than 20 percent more employees are ill than usual in winter.
Britta Beeger
Editor in Business.
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The sickness rate among nursing staff is particularly high.
One in five hospitals said that more than 20 percent more nursing staff were sick than usual at this time of year.
In more than half of the hospitals it was between 5 and 20 percent more.
The situation is less tense among doctors and in areas that are not related to patients, such as administration and housekeeping.
"Much bigger problem"
The staff shortages are “currently a much bigger problem than in normal years,” said the CEO of the DKG, Gerald Gaß, the FAZ “This shows that we have to relieve the remaining employees in patient treatment as best as possible in order to be able to maintain care ." Gass called for a "bureaucracy lockdown" in which all documentation work that is not medically or nursingly necessary is suspended. "The employees belong at the bedside, with the patients and not at the desks or in examinations of the medical service".
Every second hospital (51 percent) stated in the survey that it was not currently able to fully operate its beds in the general wards due to the lack of staff; a similar picture emerges in the intensive care units (45 percent).
For the survey, the German Hospital Institute surveyed a representative sample of 246 hospitals in Germany with at least 50 beds on behalf of the DKG in the middle of the week.