“The laughter of the children when they can go home is something very nice”

“The children’s department is a heart of our house – and will remain,” said Johann Minihuber, managing director of the Hospital of the Merciful Sisters, today at a press conference.

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On Friday, a special anniversary was celebrated at a family festival and a well -attended open house: Pediatrics has been in the Rieder hospital for 50 years. In the five decades, not surprising, a lot has happened. “Primar Mitter led the station alone from 1975 for seven years, which means that there was no second doctor. He was more or less accessible around the clock,” said Primar Andreas Wimmer, who succeeded Mitter as head of pediatric and adolescent healing in 2011. Today, 17 doctors and 34 pediatric nurses are employed at the children’s department in Ried. There are also athlete and a documentation assistant.

In 1975 there were around 1,000 inpatient recordings of children and adolescents up to the age of 18 in 1975, so there are currently around 2300. This has dropped from around twelve days (1975) to around 1.6 days. One reason for this was and is the continuous expansion of the outpatient rooms since 2009. In the meantime, five such treatment rooms are available to the doctors. “I fear that if the curve continues like this, we will not get by with these five rooms.

It was “unimaginable” what has happened in this area in the past five decades, emphasized Karina Hofbauer, management management care of pediatric and adolescent healing. As one of the examples, Hofbauer led the visiting times. In 1975, parents were only allowed to visit their children one hour four times a week. The first mother-child beds, initially mainly in the special class and for children up to the age of six, have been available from 1980. Since 1997, the state of Upper Austria has taken on the costs for accompanying persons. “Pediatrics is a specialist area that you have to like. For us not only to look after children, not only to perform medical tasks, but also to give security. The laughter of the children when they can go home is the reward and something very nice,” said Hofbauer.

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