Bundeswehr soldiers can usually be seen in films about operations in crisis areas. Or in reports about war missions. Or on the news when a disaster has occurred. Everything is far away. Even when the armed forces helped the local people after the terrible flood in western Germany last summer, it wasn’t far away, but it wasn’t really close either. But soldiers couldn’t be closer now: at my workplace in intensive care.
When I left the clinic a good week ago after a night shift, six young men in camouflage came towards me. I felt a sense of oppression. And yet I knew that we urgently needed their help. I am glad that you are with us.
A total of ten Bundeswehr soldiers are now supporting us. You are responsible for structural work that ensures our nursing and medical care: You take corona test smears from the clinic staff. At the entrance to the emergency room, they check the access rules. We also have a soldier in the intensive care unit. It helps to replenish our supply stocks, because our ward assistants can no longer keep up with the current mass of materials without support. For us nurses, this is incredibly relieving, because we have so much to do with patient care that there is no time for other work.
Julia Rettenberger works as an intensive care specialist in the Ebersberger Kreisklinik.
(Photo: Peter Hinz-Rosin)
In every shift we fill out lists with information about our patients. The colleagues on the next shift can quickly get an overview. When I read the list a few days ago at the start of my shift, there were 17 names on it. I am scared. The majority of the patients were born between 1955 and 1970. These are young cohorts. During the past corona waves, we never had them with us in this accumulation – and certainly not before the pandemic.
Unfortunately, I see so many dead and especially young dead patients than ever before. Of course, I also occasionally care for a young tumor patient who is dying of his illness, for example. It is no less tragic. But in such cases I think to myself: Medicine is simply not ready yet, we cannot treat and cure everything. But it’s different with Corona, almost everyone could protect themselves here. To know that and still treat so many seriously ill people, to see many of them die – it crumbles.
In the past few days we have also been able to make use of the so-called cloverleaf system in the clinic, which coordinates the transfer of patients across Germany. So we moved a patient to Landsberg. Another to Hamburg. And another to Lübeck. Actually a great thing, because this way we are relieved and free capacities are created. At least one could think so. But the situation is actually different: New patients keep coming.
Julia Rettenberger is an intensive care nurse. In this column, the 28-year-old tells every week about her work at the district clinic in Ebersberg. The collected texts can be found under sueddeutsche.de/thema/Auf_Station.