“We see the safety and life of the individual at risk in the event of a medical emergency,” warns President Harald Schlögel. Because: “The thinner the bases are occupied, the longer the access routes and the less likely it is to find a free emergency doctor.”
The reasons for the shortage of emergency doctors are manifold: there is a wave of retirements, changes in emergency doctor training have led to more effort. The fee is also not appropriate in view of the burden, says Franz Tödling, head of the department for emergency and rescue services in the Lower Austrian Medical Association. The finding that there are too few emergency doctors is correct and also applies to Upper Austria, says the Linz emergency doctor Fritz Firlinger, the consultant for emergency medicine in the Medical Association for Upper Austria. But this deficiency has a lot to do with “the fact that the alarm threshold has dropped”.
From 2000 to 10,000 uses
Firlinger gives a numerical example: In the 1990s, there were around 2,000 calls with ambulances in Linz and in the Linz-Land district. There are now an average of 10,000 deployments a year.
“Naca 3”: In emergency medicine, this is the international code for an injury or illness that requires admission to a hospital. “But 80 percent of our emergency medical services are actually below this threshold,” says Firlinger. “When you drive there in the middle of the night and the only thing you have to do is shake hands with the patient, you ask yourself why you were there at all,” admits the emergency doctor at the Hospital of the Brothers of Mercy in Linz concerns. His proposed solution: You have to train more specially trained paramedics and give them more powers by law. For example, the current legal situation only allows paramedics to administer a glucose infusion to hypoglycemic patients in exceptional cases, because this is reserved for doctors. You have to create a “regulatory competence” for emergency paramedics so that they can treat patients without having to call an emergency doctor afterwards. “An amendment to the Paramedic Act would be a great relief for emergency doctors,” said Firlinger. (staro)
Source: Nachrichten
