The corona numbers are rising again. However, the occupancy of the intensive care units in the Munich Clinic hospitals has remained constant so far. What worries the managing director of the Munich clinic, Axel Fischer, is the enormous loss of staff. Almost 200 employees are currently missing every week. “It’s a really difficult situation.” And the top has not yet been reached.
According to the Munich Clinic, employees are primarily infected in their private lives. Then it goes into quarantine and they are absent from patient care until the PCR test is negative. And the hospitals also lacked employees who had to look after their “positive children at home”.
In the area of physicians and nursing staff, one can still compensate because these departments are staffed with larger numbers or temporarily fewer beds can be operated, says managing director Axel Fischer. However, it is problematic in all areas that would generally keep the hospital running and that do not have such opportunities.
Fischer singles out only two examples. On the one hand, there are the laboratories that are reaching their capacity limits. On the other hand, the so-called sterile goods processing. In this area, it is ensured that the surgical instruments are prepared absolutely germ-free. This work is a “lengthy and multi-stage process”. However, operations cannot be carried out if there are too few processed surgical instruments.
In these areas we are “at times a bit thinly positioned,” says Fischer. Nevertheless, all patients would be cared for. No department has been closed so far. Elective, i.e. plannable, interventions are currently also possible. As during the entire Corona period, “only operations that really need to be postponed” would now be postponed in the Munich clinic.
And the managing director emphasizes again that he is “really worried” about how things will continue if the number of infections continues to rise. Two years of Corona are simply a big challenge. “Because all the employees,” he says, “already walk with a cane anyway.”