The vast majority of Viennese hospital doctors see massive quality losses and bottlenecks in patient care. This is the result of a survey commissioned by the Vienna Medical Association after a series of so-called risk reports in Peter Hajek’s “Public Opinion Strategies”. The doctors also sharply criticize city politics.
84 percent of Viennese hospital doctors agree with the statement that “the current general conditions in the hospital lead to a sustained and lasting loss of quality in the medical care of patients”. 64 percent very much agree with this statement, another 20 percent tend to agree. Only two percent completely disagreed with the statement. 78 percent agree with the statement that there are major bottlenecks in the care of patients in Vienna’s hospitals – 50 percent of them very much, another 28 percent rather.
City politics doesn’t get off well with the Viennese hospital doctors. 72 percent state that Vienna’s city policy “does nothing against the problems in Vienna’s hospitals”. And 68 percent agree that City Councilor for Health Peter Hacker (SPÖ) does not take the risk reports from Viennese hospitals “seriously enough”.
In the next two weeks, the Vienna Medical Association now wants to organize “action weeks” and visit all hospitals. We want to encourage our colleagues to continue to report grievances. The Vienna Medical Association is expressly “solidarity” with the strike announced for tomorrow, Wednesday, in the Viennese order hospitals. The Viennese ÖVP health spokeswoman Ingrid Korosec spoke of a “terrifying picture” and saw her criticism confirmed. She accused hacker of a “policy of appeasement and denial” and urged him to take immediate action.
Not only doctors but also nursing staff are dissatisfied, said Chamber of Labor President Renate Anderl in a broadcast on Tuesday. Almost 85 percent say that at least one care activity in their team has often been omitted or delayed in the last two weeks. Many necessary care services would fall under the table because there was no time. As a result, dangerous situations would be recognized less often and many people would be discharged from the hospital with poor information. This in turn results in a large number of preventable readmissions to the hospital.
Diakonie director Maria Katharina Moser took the same line on Tuesday. “Politicians urgently need to create framework conditions that relieve the burden on nursing staff and enable good care. Above all, it’s about more time and that requires an increase in the number of staff,” she is quoted as saying in a broadcast.
