116th General Assembly of the Marburger Bund: Patient protection without its own law

116th General Assembly of the Marburger Bund: Patient protection without its own law

Good working conditions for hospital doctors are the best protection for clinicians the Marburger Bund. The trade union advocates an open approach to errors.
Fewer errors: The shorter working hours of the doctors, argued Rudolf Henke, ultimately benefit the patients. Photos: Christian Griebel
The Marburger Bund (MB) has spoken out against bundling the rights of patients in separate patient protection law. Comprehensive patient protection can best be guaranteed through health system that is financially adequately funded and organized with the extensive participation of insured persons and patients affected, according to resolution of the 116th general meeting of the medical union, which met on November 6th and 7th in Berlin. The rights of patients in Germany were already summarized in charter in 2003; A renewed bundling of rights, as provided for in the coalition agreement of the new federal government, would bring no added value. The most important thing that patients in Germany now have to protect against is the lack of doctors in clinics and practices, emphasized MB chairman Rudolf Henke in front of around 200 delegates. The most effective medicine against the shortage of doctors is, on the other hand, the creation of attractive jobs for the doctors and that is, through the design of doctor-specific collective agreements, our very own task as the doctors' union, at least as far as the salaried and civil servant doctors are concerned. Successes in Berlin The main currency in collective bargaining for the doctors' union continues to be the TV doctors / VKA, i.e. the collective agreement for doctors at municipal hospitals. Lutz Hammerschlag, head of the collective bargaining unit, reported that both the negotiations with CharitUniversittsmedizin Berlin and the German Red Cross Berlin have recently succeeded in implementing this target. Decisive for these successes was once again the willingness of the affected MB members to strike: As negotiator of the Marburger Bund, you always have red button in your pocket that you can press and then you can defend yourself. Thank you for that. With long applause, the delegates thanked Hammerschlag for their tireless efforts. Two more problem children On the other hand, the collective bargaining between the MB with the Association of Professional Associations and the German Pension Insurance Federation is about to fail. Labor disputes do not seem to be excluded here.In the next year, the MB will conduct collective bargaining with the collective bargaining association of German countries (here the company doctors are to be included in the scope of the collective agreement), with the association of municipal employers' associations (VKA, here the MB terminated the pay table on December 31, 2009), the medical service of the health insurance, the Rhn-Klinikum AG, the Helios-Kliniken GmbH, the Sana-Kliniken AG and the Vivantes network for health in Berlin.
Congratulations on the election success: Jörg-Dietrich Hoppe considers Rudolf Henke's new double function as member of the Bundestag and as union chairman to be compatible.
High on the priority list in these collective bargaining rounds is the better planning of the workload . Tariff expert Hammerschlag: It simply cannot be that you, as clinic doctor, do not know in the morning when you will be leaving the hospital in the evening. In addition, the sham packs on the on-call service must finally be over: Wherever there is full work, you officially often do on-call duty because it is cheaper for your employer. In this context, the widespread zero-sum game on standby duty should also not be accepted. The problem: If the 16-hour medical on-call service is rated at 50 percent following an 8-hour day-to-day service, the doctor in many clinics has the next day off, but he does not earn more than if he did on both days would have done regular day shift even though he spent 24 hours in the hospital. Higher surcharges for night work should make this model unattractive in the future. As further goals, the negotiator named the abolition of the overtime monopoly (i.e. the problem that the chief physician usually determines whether overtime has been worked) and better recognition of overtime that is performed by doctors who are employed part-time The desired further improvement in medical working conditions is prerequisite for sufficient funding for the hospitals. Accordingly, the MB calls on the federal government to ensure adequate financing of the health care system even in the event that the economic crisis continues and the number of unemployed increases. The 116th Annual General Meeting expressly welcomed the intention of the new coalition to compensate for loss of income in the statutory health insurance system caused by the crisis with accompanying measures taken throughout the state: The financing must be based on the need for care and not the other way around, underlined Henke, who will, of course, be responsible for the health policy of the in the next four years black and yellow federal government can directly influence. As reminder: on 27.In September the MB chairman for the CDU was elected to the German Bundestag, circumstance that the President of the German Medical Association expressly welcomed in short statement: I congratulate him from the bottom of my heart on this election, said Prof. Dr. med. Jrg-Dietrich Hoppe. He hopes that Henke will stand up to the professor from Cologne-Mlheim in parliament. Incidentally, it is not the first time that union chairman has sat in the Bundestag: Nobody in other professional groups was upset about it either. Dealing openly with errors The traditionally public part at the start of the autumn general meeting was held by MB this year dedicated to dealing with errors in everyday hospital life. The establishment of new safety and error culture is absolutely necessary, according to unanimous decision of the delegates: The common practice of always defining mistake as personal offense of an individual and sanctioning it accordingly (naming, blaming, shaming) must give way to system-analytical safety culture. Experience and numerous studies have shown that undesirable events and errors are often not caused in isolation by individual people, but rather turn out to be the end products of chain of unfortunate system-related organizational, relationship and communication deficiencies. Expand voluntary systems The application more systematically Risk management strategies contribute significantly to increasing patient safety, the 116th Annual General Meeting decided. Error analysis and evaluation are an essential prerequisite for establishing such systems. It is matter of learning from one's own mistakes and those of others, or even near-mistakes: In addition to damage assessments and case discussions, especially voluntary reporting systems (critical incident reporting systems, CIRS) are suitable. Their application, further development and the networking of the hospitals working with these systems are important future tasks. The findings of the expert committees and arbitration boards of the medical associations gained from the treatment error statistics and the error analyzes should also be taken into account even more than before in the basic, further and advanced training of doctors. However, errors mainly happen when people are overloaded, Henke clarified . The negative consequences of high work density and excessively long working hours are undisputed: The reductions in working hours that we demand and are now legally and collectively enforced also make an important contribution to avoiding errors and patient safety.Jens Flintrop
4 0