Our colleague Anke Helle reported on her father’s death in the fall. An outcry that shows how sick our clinics are. The response was so great that we are following up this week. With a report on Germany’s broken health system – and a search for solutions.
Something is wrong here. Something’s really fishy here. This feeling creeps up on sick people and their relatives far too often when they come into contact with the health system in Germany. Everyone knows them, the descriptions of hopelessly overwhelmed doctors and nurses who hold their ground like a straggler in a hopeless battle. Until one day they themselves need help and leave the desperate behind.
Most people are built in such a way that they quickly forget these stories because they want to live well – without Corona, without fear. Without too much death before death. But these stories are not gone. The deadly drama in Germany’s medical practices and clinics continues.
In order to see it to its full extent, we need people like Anke Helle. Anke is editor-in-chief of the magazine Freund, which, like FOCUS online, belongs to BURDA. Last fall, Anke decided to make the story of her father’s death public. They were published by FOCUS Magazin and FOCUS online, and hundreds of thousands have read them. It’s one of those stories that are often not told because grief, the estate stuff and the feeling that it’s too late anyway take up too much of most people.
But Anke wrote down how the tyranny of the rules kept her away from her sick father. “You can’t see him until he dies,” a clinic worker told her over the phone. When she made her way to him anyway, she found a young woman sitting at her desk in despair with her hands over her head and saying to a nurse: “I’m the only doctor in the whole house, I don’t know how that is should go.”
Anke and her family have experienced how a system and its employees who are specialized in the service of people produce deeply inhuman things in times of need. Corona has only disclosed the mismanagement that has taken place over the decades. Anke received hundreds of responses, including dozens of emails and letters from people who had had similar experiences.
This strong response is also reason for us to dig deeper: FOCUS online has researched with a team led by our chief reporter Göran Schattauer how things are with our healthcare system – and what can help it.
In addition to a critical inventory, we are concerned with these questions:
Paula Schneider finds such houses and presents them.
You can read all this this week in our focus on the sick healthcare system. You are also welcome to tell us about your experiences with doctors and clinics – both positive and negative.
What is your experience with our healthcare system? What have you experienced in clinics and medical practices? What are you upset about? And what would you like to say to Federal Health Minister Karl Lauterbach (SPD)? Write us! You can send your experiences to gesundheit@focus.de.
