HOSPITAL TOUR

One of the things that the military included in their orientation week was a tour of local hospitals. During one of the orientation days, a Patient Liaison (more on that later) escorted about 40 of us on a bus tour to each of the hospitals in the area, in an effort to make us more comfortable with the German medical system. Why would we need such reassurance, you might ask? Well, it turns out that on our installation, the medical facilities are only staffed to care for the soldiers – not the dependents. Rest assured, the military handles the lion’s share of the costs of our healthcare – but the care itself is doled out “on the economy” as they say here.
Hubbalicious and I weren’t able to participate in the tour that took place during our orientation class. Hubbz had a training class specific to his office that he had to take that day – and I had a business trip that kept us from going to the following one. So, we only recently got our turn on the bus. We thought it was a VERY valuable part of the orientation – and here’s a little bit about what we learned:

First – our guide was a Patient Liaison. This heroic person is paid by the US Government to translate and represent us military folk whenever we need them in our medical adventures. The notion they attempted to drill into our heads was that as soon as we knew we needed hospital care, we should call them – even in lieu of calling an ambulance (they can speak German to the emergency operators). The Military Police have a direct line to the Liaison on call so we only have to keep one number by the phone!

Calling the Patient Liaison can be extremely useful in all levels of emergencies, which brings us to our second major take-home lesson. German hospitals have specific areas of expertise. There is a woman’s hospital, a hospital that deals with cardiology, oncology and endocrinology, and a different hospital that administers care for ENT, internal medicine or orthopedics…only for adults, of course. Phew!! Each hospital has several, ailment specific Emergency Rooms. You can go to the internal medicine ER, and be told that they actually think you have a kidney stone….so please go to the ER down the hall. Sometimes your correct ER is at a different hospital! So, when your child breaks her arm, and you take her to the nearest Children’s Hospital – you may be told that she cannot be seen there, because the Children’s ORTHOPEDIC Emergency Room is at an entirely different hospital altogether! Are you as confused as I am? That’s why we will call the Patient Liaison!

While this ER system seems scary and horribly inefficient to my Western sensibility – it is said to increase the efficiency of each specific emergency room. We were told on the tour that the average wait time to be seen is about 20 minutes in a non-trauma situation. Pretty impressive!

As we wandered through hospital lobbies, we started to notice some common themes. All of the hospitals had large cafés and gift shops. Each had a large selection of food items available. Many patients were seen milling about with walkers or canes in their robes or seated at the café having lunch (some of them outside smoking!). We learned that they keep you in hospitals much longer here in an effort to be sure that their diagnosis and treatment plans are completely successful. They encourage you to walk around, get fresh air, and sit and visit with your family while you are a patient. They don’t necessarily provide you with full meals and drinks during your stay (hence the popularity of the café and the large food inventory in the gift shops).

We also noticed that most patients were in their own pajamas. It turns out that hospital gowns are not really provided either. Privacy is not as important here, so in most cases, patients share a room without a curtain dividing them – even during examinations. This sounds pretty rough – but I think that once you accept that the hospital experience won’t be what you expect in the US, it will probably be just fine.

The only time I really got that “sinking” feeling was when Hubbz leaned over and whispered – “Did you notice that not one of these hospitals so far has air conditioning?” GULP. We made a pact not to require hospitalization between the months of June and August….here’s hoping fate is with us!!