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Status: 02.11.2022 09:25 a.m
The medical profession in Germany is also aging – and many young doctors no longer want to work full-time. The German Medical Association is calling for more study places to be created to counteract the shortage.
It doesn’t matter whether it’s in the country, in problem districts or in hospitals: there is a shortage of doctors everywhere. The baby boomer generation is about to retire; the gap will widen further in the coming years. The Central Institute for Statutory Health Insurance Physicians predicts that 9,000 doctors will retire every year by 2035.
But it’s not just the medical profession that’s aging – society as a whole is, too. More and more people are getting older, are often chronically ill and need medical help. This also takes more doctor’s time than it used to.
In order to close the impending supply gap, the German Medical Association is therefore calling for more places to study medicine. At least 3,000, better still 5,000 to 6,000. The federal states would have to pay for it, education is a state matter. The cost of studying medicine: according to the Federal Statistical Office, an average of 266,000 euros.
More doctors working than ever before
In fact, according to the German Medical Association, there are currently more than 416,000 working doctors – more than ever before. The lack seems paradoxical. But behind the increase in heads there is no increase in working hours. Many young doctors no longer want to work full-time. Statistically, 1.2 young doctors are needed to replace a doctor who is leaving.
The reasons for this: Two-thirds of all medical students are now women. And more often than their male colleagues, they have to reconcile work and family life. As a rule, this cannot be reconciled with 24-hour shifts in the hospital. In addition, the cost pressure in the hospitals is now so high that, according to a recent survey by the Marburger Bund doctors’ union, a quarter of all hospital doctors are toying with the idea of quitting their job. Others reduce their working hours to withstand the pressure in the long run.
Lack of staff is not the only problem
The Advisory Council on the Assessment of Developments in the Health Care System states: Overworked clinicians are not the result of a general shortage of staff. Its chairman, the Frankfurt general practitioner Professor Ferdinand Gerlach, on the other hand, blames the poor organization of the hospital landscape and the cost pressure on the case flat rates for the abuses.
Clinics would have too strong an incentive to carry out expensive diagnostics and unnecessary operations because this is the only way to make money. This is harmful for the patients and means that doctors and nurses are almost “burned out”.
The fact that many procedures, such as cataract surgery on the eye, are still being carried out on an inpatient basis in Germany also contributes to the overload. In many other European countries, such treatments are carried out on an outpatient basis, people do not have to stay in the hospital overnight. At present, however, the procedure in the hospital is better remunerated than the outpatient procedure. However, this ties up staff that could be used more sensibly elsewhere – for example in poorer parts of town and rural regions.
Country medical practices hardly find successors
Even in the private sector, the retirement of many doctors threatens to tear supply gaps. It is not uncommon for no successor to be found for the practice in the country. On the one hand, this has to do with the fact that many young doctors would rather work as employees than take on a practice with the financial risk. And on the other hand, many young doctors are put off by the idea that they might have to be available to their patients day and night in a country doctor’s office.
In the meantime, however, many physicians are joining forces to form joint practices or medical care centers, sharing premises, staff and work – and thus making it possible to work part-time as a doctor. At the same time, students at Germany’s universities are now getting to know – and appreciate – general medicine earlier through internships. The hope: Young people can be won over to rural areas and thus contribute to a reliable basic supply. The best “advertising” for such a path is apparently the conditions in German hospitals.