The English are just slightly different!

I was in the hospital with my daughter as normal as i don´t see much of the out side world. But the kinderspital has wonderful white walls

My daughter has been ill since birth, and we were brought into the hospital before they got the results back from biopsys taken a few days before. Because they needed to check i was not abusing my child by not feeding her

To be far to them she is 3yrs and weights 9kgs now. so i understand they had to check for themselfs.
I am not abusing my daughter and they did say they were sorry, but added to my total amazment;

"there are slight cultural differances bettween the English and the Germans" (this doc had been in the UK last year working) "i could see by your manerisums that you were upset about being hear and the way you aproched the situation was very English, the Germans would never have questioned what we doing, and that is typially english and the english take more affence at being questioned about there parenting"

Was he having a F***ing laugh???
Of course i was mad as hell, could of worked that one out before i arrived on the ward... and are we so very differant? And come on surly even a german person would have been furious???

i though that the hole week i was polite, aprochable, friendly... (even though i wanted to ripe there heads off and scream don there throat!)

i just had to post because i am still in shock! when it comes down to it i am english LOL

But at least i now know i am a farly reasonable mum, wonder if they will send me a diploma now as i passed the german parenting test or is that also english!!!
Tracey

I spent a week in hospital here about a year after I arrived. I was given false information at every turn (in my consultation they told me it would be an ambulant operation - meaning I could go home after, but when I arrived they asked why I had not brought a change of clothes and my overnight kit as I would be staying for a week).

Every attempt I made to find out what was going on was met with distain. The attitude was that I should shut up and do what I was told. Amazingly, this is exactly what the other patients on the ward told me to do, as well.

I eventually signed a liability waiver and checked myself against doctor's advice (with no ill effects, I'd add). If I hadn't Lord knows how long I would have been there.

I think in every country doctors are regarded as something of a sacred class that is beyond question. That simply seems to be magnified in Germany where you add to that an inherent trust of all authority. My doctors were none too pleased to have to deal with an American asking questions about his treatment.

I've recently spent a lot of time in German Hospitals as a patience, apart from the dreadful food (nothing wrong with it, I just didn't like it, my own private hate of German fare thats all) I can only praise the Doctors and Nurses. I was given clear answers to all of my questions, no fuss, no hassle and none of the ol' sie and herr crap either... I trained them to call me Mac just like everyone else

Yeah, after breaking my arm I feel thoroughly looked after by the German health system. They just seem to have a lot of rules (rules which must be obeyed!) and regulations which can seem a bit odd to English people. I think most Germans simply put up with all this, and so the doctors probably get frustrated when foreigners don't simply accept what they don't understand.

I asked a lot of questions too, but only in a curious way, rather than challenging why they were doing something, and I got a lot of helpful responses this way. I did find that I was often lacking information about the system and what I was supposed to do next, but I think this is probably because 1) they assume people just know the routine, and 2) their English isn't 100% perfect so they say only what they need too (I am the same with German!).

My experience is that while the medical care is excellent and well resourced here the bedside maner is sometimes non-existent.

Sorry to hear your daughter is still needing to spend so much time in hospital Tracey.

I do think they have been wonderful in everything they have done for my daughter.
just having a sick child is stressful enough with out added extras. and i do fully understand why they wanted us in. There are some people that would hurt there childern in fact i think there is a case in germany at the moment about a child that was not fed properly, and is now damaged. so per-haps they are more sensitive at the moment.

i do agree they are wonderful, and in comarison with the NHS they are amazing. still don´t understand why others would not get angry? and why they were amased at me! even though i though i was ok. but per-haps when you are so up set they can see it!
And the end of the day my daughter is very be-hind in development and is very sick and if i have to speak up then i will. loudly!!
But that is per-haps because i am used to fighting the NHS system to get anything done and get help. and long term care makes you defencive i think especially coming from the UK. And again the consultant and staff in the UK were great, but the hospital was not and when emma contracted MRSA i was not best pleased. All it takes is a bit of cleaning once in a while!!!

Emmas doing ok we have results now that show problems still with her intestine. and the chances are she has a very rare disorder, wich there are millions of! so who knows if we will ever get a name for it! But they are working hard, even have 24 hr line through to our consultant who is the best in the world.
so can not complain really
take care

tracey

I remember when my daughter was born in a German hospital, after 4 days I was going insane with the 'enforced' peace and quiet so I asked to leave. You'd have thought I'd just asked to have my child euthanzised. I was told how dangerous it was for me and the baby to leave hospital and how we both would get ill from the stress.
I checked myself out, but to a lot of head shaking and tutting and it was written clearly on the Mutterpass that I had left against the wishes of the hospital. I had a normal birth and was in no way ill.

Anyhow, I 'm glad to hear your daughter is getting good care Tracey and keep asking the questions too. Some German docs do feel that they are superior to us mere mortals and that they are beyond reproach.

I could write a book on how badly the hospital did when faced with our first daughter. What annoyed us was that they weren't prepared to take advice from anyone on how to treat her properly. They were totally incompetent and were too proud to ask for help. So we removed her after 3 weeks and flew her to London with green puss oozing out of her legs. Great Ormond Street then treated her as an outpatient because in a hospital she would only pick up more infections. In Germany they wanted to keep her in a incubator - the worst thing you could do for her condition.

And then, when there was an article about us in the local newspaper (just first page) we implied that we weren't too happy with the treatment in Höchst and some employee from the Kinderklinik called the reporter and gave her a huge amount of abuse.

We then found that doctor's here were eager to try experimental treatments, all od which we refused. And now she is doing fine.

Tracey, without meaning to be rude, you shuld put the well-being of your child before you're own sensibilities. That's obviously what the doctors were doing and fair play to them. Social workers in the UK seem to be more concerned about not offending the parents than keeping a child safe - I'd rather they said to the parent (even if the parent was me) "Screw you, we want to be sure this child isn't being mistreated."

Jean-Pierre

You've obviously never had a chronically sick kid, J-P. Never experienced the desperation of doing all you can and knowing that it's not enough, that the doctor's are probably as helpless as you. And all the time you have to watch the dearest thing to you suffer.
Take your "fair-play" theory and shove it. Come back when you have been thru it yourself.

Totally unnecesary comment!

Yep, it boils down to that!

I'm sorry about your child being so poorly Tracey, I really hope things get better for you and your family in the future.

Well no I haven't. I didn't realise that was a precondition for having an opinion.
But you're talking about a different thing. Doctors can be incompetent wherever they come from - that wasn't the original point and I'm certainly not contesting it.
The original post was about Doctors taking a child in for examination to see whether the parents were abusing her. The implication being that this was done without regard for the sensibilities of the parents and that the doctor commented that British people are usually more easily offended by such treatment. My point was that the well-being of the child should be placed above the sensibilities of the parent and I stand by that

Jean-Pierre

Our kids were born in the UK, so I cannot compare with the German system. What I can say is that with our son (born 10 weeks early) we got a lot of support and were involved as parents as soon as possible to look after him: change nappies, feed via tube ,etc and take him out of the incubator to cuddle ... In other words, we as parents were - at least from our point of view - heavily involved in taking care of him and asked for our opinion about any treatment. And our doctor wanted to withold 'treatment' as long as possible, to give him time to sort himself out, and not to use him as some sort of treatment guinea pig.

Whether it would have beeen the same story here I don't know but we're very thankful to the NHS and the doctors and nurses in the SCBU at Nottingham's QMC.

J-P, The psychological well being of the patient and carers does have an impact on their physical well being and it's not really necessary to sacrifice one for the sake of the other.

There are plently of doctors who can make patronising and unhelpful remarks to emotionally vulnerable patients and their families not just here in Germany. As for patients not questioning the doctors here I disagree, often doctors here give plenty of information when they have it and don't always need to be questioned. In general I have found Germans to be very well informed about their illnesses.

Similar to the situation I found myself in (well, apart from the baby and all). Every day they would tell me that I could go home tomorrow, but when I asked why I couldn't go home now, they wouldn't give me a straight answer. They would say things about it being dangerous for me to leave. This was obviously quite disturbing. Lacking any information, I started putting two and two together, which inevitably added up to 100, and in my drugged up post-op state I determined that I was about to die.

It finally took my girlfried chasing a doctor down the hallway yelling at him that I was hysterical before he told her (never told me) that it was merely routine observation. That's when I got the hell out of there.

The simple answer is, because of the way the system works here, there is a very big financial incentive for the hospitals to keep as many beds as possible occupied for as long as possible. This results in them trying to keep you in for a few days more even after there is no real medical need for it.

That is the exact conclusion I came to. Especially since I'm privately insured. They even had me on the phone to my insurer an hour before my date with the anaesthesiologist just to make sure how much I was covered for. I hung up after five minutes and told the hospital administrator that I was in no mood to be having that conversation.

Mind you, you can play the system to your own advantage! I get a refund of getting on for 1500 € if I don't book any "ambulant" costs, so when I needed a whole battery of tests done a couple of years back, which would have cost me a few 100 €, I just asked the doc to book me in for an overnight stay. Needless to say, this was no problem, so I got everything paid for by the insurance and still kept my "no-claims bonus"!

Just wanted to add that under no circumstances would i ever put my daughter before me. In fact my life is deicated to being a full time nurse at home.
i must stress again that i understand why they did take us in. Of course they have to look at every avenue. And i would expect them to just suprised at there reaction to me!

And i think they are wonderful..
But it is very hard and it is not possible to understand unless you have been through it you self, like any situation. thats why i run one of the biggist support groups in the uk. so that other parents and people can come to other people like my self that understand.

I can understand that it must be distressing to be checked to see whether you're mistreating your sick child, but as Tracey says it is necessary as there are some pretty unpleasant people around - viz the woman in Frankfurt an der Oder who killed 8 of her own children.
Perhaps it wasn't a wise move for a doctor to air his opinions that Brits are more sensitive to being checked up than Germans, especially at such a sensitive time. But the fact that innocent people are checked is surely a comfort, rather than a failing.
On the more general point of being kept in hospital, in the UK it is the other extreme - where you are kicked out of hospital almost as soon as you are concious. At least that is the case if you're giving birth. Faced with a choice of being advised to stay in hospital longer than necessary and being kicked out before I'm ready, I know which system I would choose.

Jean-Pierre

We had a similar situation her in Germany. Our daughter was born approx 10 weeks early with pneumonia and other complications. Whilst my wife had the major hassle as she stayed in the hospital at least she was German and understood the system. Throughout the initial 3-4 months whilst my daughter was in hospital the staff were very friendly and supportive. They were very keen to ensure contact between both parents and the child and also ensuring basic care of the child had been learnt. When asking about kinderartz in the area we were told 'Unfortunately I am not allowed to mention who I would recommend, such as Dr XXXX or Dr YYYY" so even doctors sometimes break/flex the rules.