Last week Brad and I got to experience going to the emergency room in Germany. (I had a urinary tract infection - real painful but needs antibiotics fast). We called the Patient Liaison Officer here on base, a German lady who gives you directions and then calls the hospital to smooth the way (there are two of them that work here).
We got to the hospital and walked in, it was 1:00 a.m. in the middle of the night. No one, and I mean NO ONE, was around. Following the Patient Liaisons directions we went to the room labeled in English Emergency Care (this is done just because of the number of English speakers here in Stuttgart). We couldn't find the place because the arrows pointed one way, which when you went there the arrows went away with no further directions. We wandered around for 5 minutes or so, backtracking repeatedly, when this German nurse comes walking up. Fortunately she spoke a little English - turns out that the intersection that we kept walking past was the Emergency Care center. There was a room to the side with glass windows which was the Emergency Care center. We never recognized it because there was NO ONE there and the lights were off!!! If the Patient Liaison hadn't called the German nurse wouldn't have been there either - she was looking for us!
She had us fill out some paperwork, I provided a sample, and then she left us there while she went and dealt with the sample. About 10 minutes later she came back and told us the urologist would see me. So we headed for the urology ward, which was empty, and waited for someone to come. A nurse and doctor finally came down the hall and took the sample from us (the nurse had given it back). After they agreed I did have an infection they finally let us in to the examining room where the Doctor asked some questions and then did a sonogram of my innards to check for infection. This was downright strange since I've had these infections before and the usually just give you painkillers, antibiotics and a wave on your way -- I've never even seen a Urologist before! After that, he gave us some sample pills - enough for a couple days - and sent us on our way.
The entire time we were in the hospital we only saw those 3 people, and the whole thing took under 1 hour. An American emergency room is guaranteed to take at least 3 hours and you leave with a prescription and another hour wait ahead of you.
The way the hospitals work in Germany is you go to the area for the symptoms you have - if your guts hurt you go to internal medicine, if you break a bone you go to orthopedics, etc. Some hospitals don't have certain wards and you have to go to a different hospital - one exact example is if you have a sick child and the hospital doesn't have a pediatric ward they send you to another hospital. And there is no general emergency room - the Emergency Care area is just for them to get our paperwork so they can get paid.
I have to admit, it was freaky - like one of those deserted hospital scenes from a horror movie!
No comments:
Post a Comment