Ricardo Lange has already experienced a lot as a nurse in the intensive care unit – not just since Corona. In his book “Intensiv” he writes about completely exhausted staff – and about the value of care.
People clapping on balconies and at windows – these are images that made the news at the beginning of the pandemic in spring 2020. But what was intended as a sign of gratitude for doctors and nurses in continuous Corona work also caused frustration among many of those addressed.
“I know that many people applauded from the heart,” said intensive care nurse Ricardo Lange almost two years later in an interview with the German Press Agency. “But little has changed for us.” Corona acts like a burning glass for the long-standing serious nursing shortage in Germany, which is leaving deep ditches in the health system. So deep that Lange published the book “Intensive – When the state of emergency is everyday life. An emergency call» wrote.
The 40-year-old Brandenburger Lange, who lives on the outskirts of Berlin, has become something of a face of the precarious working conditions in care during the pandemic. He gained fame throughout Germany through social media, a column and when he was invited to the federal press conference by the then Health Minister Jens Spahn (CDU) last year to speak about everyday hospital life. In his book he now writes about what has been bothering him since Corona, how he has experienced the care situation for years and what needs to change.
Lack of time and less staff
It’s a simple calculation: If there aren’t enough staff available, everyone has to do more than is actually reasonable. For intensive care, writes Lange, the increasing shortage of staff means that a specialist no longer has to take care of two patients at the same time, but rather three, and often even more. The consequences: permanent overexertion and a growing discrepancy between the demands placed on patient care and the reality of lack of time. Added to this would be inadequate pay and a lack of appreciation.
Lange, who according to his description has been working for a temporary work agency for several years, describes in “Intensive” experiences from around twelve years of everyday clinical work. Overwhelming exhaustion to the point of dozing off at the traffic light on the way home, the fear of making mistakes that could mean the difference between life and death. The panic that the trained intensive care nurse once felt when he was assigned to a children’s ward because of understaffing and had to shoulder a non-specialist responsibility that he did not feel up to seems understandable.
Fight for life to the point of exhaustion
And then there has been the pandemic for almost two years, in which the intensive care units are always full of corona infected people who can no longer breathe. In which the staff repeatedly fights for life to the point of physical and mental exhaustion, always with the risk of infecting themselves despite bulky protective clothing. In the pandemic, people die differently, writes Lange. Sometimes more suddenly and more and more lonely. He has seen so many patients die that he cannot remember them all. During this time, too many nurses would have left the job.
Lange reports that he himself has been burdened by the increasing social division since the beginning of the pandemic. If disinfectants and protective material were stolen from wards and opponents of the corona measures sent him inhuman messages, abysses would open up. “But we will only all make it out of this pandemic together,” he says in an interview. The unvaccinated and the vaccinated are worth the same in the intensive care units. “My job as a nurse is not to judge. We must not begin to categorize people or judge them morally.”
At times, Lange’s simple, rather unsparing depictions of “Intensiv” might give readers an oppressive feeling. He writes touchingly about the first tears he shed on the job after the death of a little patient. And about his worst day in the pandemic, when he left a loyal friend alone before he died due to perceived work pressure. In retrospect, he says with bitterness: “You don’t have time to mourn, you have to function. And in the end, no one will thank you.”
Disappointed in politics
Lange answers many questions in the book – how disappointed he is by what he believes is still a lack of a political concept for improving the care situation, why the sound of a zipper being pulled gives him goosebumps. At the same time, he raises questions that he cannot answer: that of a panacea – and whether he still wants to work in the job in the long term.
The intensive care nurse takes on a lot on around 190 pages and also wants to show possible solutions. A bonus or more for care is not enough; fundamental structural changes are needed, according to Lange. From his point of view, this should include better pay, overwork compensation through additional free time and health as a new school subject in order to make the job more attractive for the next generation. In essence, the demands are not new, and yet Lange gives them resolute emphasis.
In the end, in addition to the appeal to finally improve the working conditions for nursing staff in the long term, there is also a plea for a job that, for Lange, is “the most versatile that I know”, as he emphasizes in an interview. Which fulfills him more than any other activity – but which he is no longer willing to exercise at any price.
– Ricardo Lange: Intensive – When the state of emergency is everyday life. An emergency call. With Jan Mohnhaupt. dtv Verlagsgesellschaft, Munich, 192 pages, EUR 16.00, ISBN: 978-3-423-26329-0.