Action to save emergency rooms: nationwide petition from emergency rooms in hospitals

“People are queuing up to register for the emergency room, emergency services staff are waiting to take over their patients, the trauma room telephone is ringing, nursing staff are rushing around the area to treat new emergencies, put on casts and initiate life-saving emergency measures. The entire hallway is full of stretchers with people sleeping, crying, angry, in pain or confused because there are not enough treatment rooms. A shift with – if things are going badly – ​​60 patients, but only 4 nursing staff. Unfortunately, the basic needs of the patients who have been waiting for hours are left behind because triage, i.e. the initial assessment of newly arriving emergency patients, has priority. Emergency care is crumbling at every turn, and emergency room employees currently have no way out other than to deal with these ruinous conditions…”Petition dated April 25, 2022 on Change.org theAction: Save emergency rooms there the demands and extensive justification, see also:

• Almost every second emergency room in Germany is overloaded
  “Emergency rooms in Germany are apparently often so overloaded that patient safety is sometimes at risk. The reason is a lack of beds and staff.
  According to a survey, almost every second emergency room in German hospitals is overloaded. In some cases, the overload is so severe that patient safety could be at risk, according to the survey by the German Society for Emergency Medicine (DGINA). The tense situation has worsened over the past twelve months. The ZDF program frontal and Spiegel reported on the survey.The DGINA therefore surveyed emergency departments in all federal states about their situation on June 2nd. 45 percent reported that they were overcrowded and overloaded that day. To measure the load, the company relied on an internationally established “overload traffic light”, the six-stage CEDOC score.
  Concern for patient safety
  According to the report, one in three emergency departments (31.4 percent) in level four and eight percent in level five saw severe overcrowding. 5.5 percent stated the highest level, a critical overload. DGINA President Martin Pin was shocked by the finding. We know from large international studies that “patient safety is at risk in such stressful situations.”..”Report from September 22, 2026 in Zeit online 
• Alone on shift. Neither staffing levels nor relief collective agreements: a nationwide network of initiatives provides information about conditions in emergency rooms
  “The activists’ descriptions of “saving emergency rooms” are frightening. During a digital press conference a week ago, they described cases in which an emergency nurse was on duty alone at night and two people had to be resuscitated at the same time. In one case, tragically, this did not work. The group emerged from the Berlin hospital movement. Last year, in a months-long dispute, they won collective agreements to relieve the burden on the Charité and Vivantes hospitals. As part of the struggle, the United Services Union (Verdi) organized a strike by nursing staff that lasted more than 30 days. This is exactly where the “Save Emergency Rooms” initiative comes into play. The collective agreements, which are intended to reduce the enormous overload on nursing staff, do not apply in the emergency departments of hospitals. (…) The initiative, which is now networked nationwide, now wants to draw attention to the situation with a petition on the Change.org portal. There, the activists are demanding, among other things, a care ratio of 1:4 and the “mandatory presence of at least one trained emergency nurse.” The petition has already been signed by more than 12,000 people…”Article by Steve Hollasky in the young world from May 10, 2022 

See also the dossier:Rescue service: Survey shows massive increase in workload – ver.di is calling for shorter maximum working hours

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