Dear Diary,
I'm glad you exist. You understand me. If I disagreed with you in a factual discussion, you wouldn't insist on your opinion and harp on it without questioning it.
I would have forgotten something, I hear that several times a day. Although the balance is 100% "Patrick didn't forget anything, but the nurse made a mistake". Don't you ever get embarrassed? That would be too stupid for me.
But because you lend me your ear when I have something to say, you know what's going on in my mind right now. For weeks now, not a day goes by that I don't get upset with one of my carers. It's often because of a nursing mistake, which hasn't happened for the first time, but that doesn't make it any better. Nor is it a trivial matter when they make a mistake with my medication for the third week in a row and give me double, or possibly triple, doses of softeners and laxatives again.My stomach is going to explode one day if we don't get this medication sorted out soon once and for all.
What bothers me most is that my carers - as was the case in the past with other care services - are kind-hearted people. But where things don't fit professionally, they have to be corrected. And for that, it is necessary to first admit the mistake and not to make up new excuses for every mistake. No kidding, some of my nurses have lost their storytellers. I have to deliberately exaggerate this somehow to make it clear how ridiculous and presumptuous I find it when people question my ability to think and remember something. Or telling me the same life story over and over again. No one else seems to want to understand.
But I would like to give you one piece of well-intentioned advice right now. That's what I've been thinking so often lately.
The more often and intensively someone emphasises that it wasn't him, the less likely this becomes.
The saying can be applied to so many situations. Want some examples? Please:
- I have nothing against black people. But as a black man you get everything.
- I never took any whiskey bottles home from you.
- I cleaned the whole kitchen, it was all soiled.
- I kept checking on you, but you always sleep like a rock with me.
- Don't worry, I can work.
- I have nothing against gays, but I would forbid it for my children.
- We are not in it for the money.
- I always took very little and always told you. But your girlfriend, she destroys everything.
- I am not anti-vaccination, but...
- I've never had breakfast here.
- I'm no conspiracy theorist, but Corona... and Bill Gates...
- I looked closely at your eyes and you were wrong. You said, "No." remember?
- I really don't want to force you to have a PEG, but...
- I really don't want to force you into the cannula, but...
- I always leave on time, but there is so much traffic every time.
In recent weeks, I have often found myself asking myself an interesting question. Why I still haven't actually resigned and changed care providers. Literally the question is interesting, not the answer.
For weeks I asked myself whether I shouldn't change nursing services. Recently, this question has increasingly been replaced by the question "why not?
So when I look at this question, the skies over Grünwald look pretty bleak for the current provider. You heard me right, provider. I think, after all the experiences of the past years, that we need a "humble" attitude to care on both sides once again. Scho right, I'm not going to start a fundamental debate on this today. But there is no denying that we are increasingly confronted with an excess demand for care. Without this massive imbalance in the market, many care services could not exist at all. If I had behaved even remotely as unprofessionally and unfriendly towards customers in one of my companies, my face, they would have put us in our place. Imagine if I wrote such things to the customer that care service managers threw at me. It wouldn't have taken 20 minutes for my private phone at home to ring on Sunday morning either, which reminds me of the tone of voice I allow myself.
In care, however, we seem to have got used to being screwed from top to bottom. While the work of care workers is rewarded and respected far too little on the one hand, the provider of care services is apparently allowed to do anything. They can burn out their employees and fleece their customers.
I don't do either any more. I don't see why highly motivated nurses should go with the cane after half a year because they have been scheduled to work 220 hours - plus filling in for sick colleagues and without being paid adequately (or at all). And I don't see why, even in my condition, I should still be paying €1,809.24 a month to my statutory health insurance and then still have to beg for some nursing service to take me and the well over €300,000 a year from my insurance fund. That is totally wrong. Something is going very wrong in Germany.
And that brings me to my very basic dilemma from the title of this post. The fish stinks from the head. So if everything was great with my carers, there would be nothing to stop me taking them all with me and simply quitting the care service. If there wasn't a "But..." coming, and what a one. I can only describe the quality of my care as poor at best. To blame only the management would not be justified. I have no sympathy for nurses who have two extra jobs and can't get off their asses for me. Anyone who can identify with one or more of the above statements ("I'm not an opponent of vaccination, but...") must think about whether he/she wants to continue to accompany and support me. Or not. Because one thing must be clear to everyone. I will no longer have these constant discussions in the future.