How Limited are our Resources?

Classen CF^*

Children’s Hospital, University Medicine Rostock, Ernst-Heydemann-Str. 8, Rostock, D-18057, Germany

*Corresponding Author:

Carl Friedrich Classen, MD, PhD
Children’s Hospital, University Medicine Rostock, Ernst-Heydemann-Str. 8
Rostock, D-18057, Germany
Tel: +49 381 494 7262
Fax: +49 381 494 7261
E-mail: carl-friedrich.classen@med.uni-rostock.de

Received date: Jul 29, 2016; Accepted date: Jul 30, 2016; Published date: Jul 30, 2016

Citation: Classen CF (2016) How Limited are our Resources?. J Palliat Care Med 6:278. doi:10.4172/2165-7386.1000278

Copyright: © 2016 Classen CF. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Visit for more related articles at Journal of Palliative Care & Medicine

Opinion

Our resources are extremely limited. Everybody says so. Therefore, we urgently need to save money. Economy is the key in the health system. Economy means market. Market means making money. Economists have taken power. Giant profits are made in the health system. Somehow there is a contradiction. Therefore, the authorities start regulation. The bureaucrats take power as well. A great arms race is running. Who is profiting? The high-paid economists and lawyers. Who are the so-called experts in the health system? The high-paid economists and lawyers. Who is the true cost factor?

If you work in our health system, you have these two true bosses, the economists and the lawyers. The economists will force you to see the patients as cash cows that have to be milked as much as possible. The bureaucrats will force you to ignore the patients: not what you did counts, but what you documented.

Why does a nurse work? Economists say that she or he works to earn money. Therefore, they are a cost factor, and as much work has to be squeezed into their working time as possible.

I say, a nurse works because she or he wants to help sick people. Because if she or he wanted to earn much money, she or he had become an economist or lawyer and not a nurse.

If a nurse is forced to serve the economists or bureaucrats instead of the patients, her or his work is alienated. She or he will not do as a good job as if she or he worked for the patients.

This is a waste of resources!

Many people say that due to limited resources, medical services should be limited and prioritized. Ethics should be found for this. I say, limiting resources for sick people is unethical as long as giant profits are made by others. Experts say the people do not want to pay so much for the health system. I wonder: where is the man or the woman who publicly says that he wants the money to be saved from his or her sick old mother or father or little child? Nobody really wants that money resources are taken away from the sick people. Experts say that already twenty or thirty per cent of the gross national product is spent for the health system. I say – so what? If we told our ancesters two hundred years ago that in our days we spend five per cent of our income for food and twenty per cent for entertainment – they would call us crazy.

Where we are?

If an economist shows a hospital how to save money and how to better milk the patients, he just looks like a resource. In fact he is a cost factor to the health system. If a lawyer helps the hospital win a trial against a patient, in fact he is a cost factor to the health system. Because the health services were much better off, if the nurse was able to serve the sick with full devotion.

So - it is an error believing that resources mean money. It is the devotion of a nurse which is the true resource.

If the people feel that our health system does the very best for the old mother or father or little child, they will pay for it. If they feel that we just want to make money, they won`t.

And by serving the lawyers and economists, we cut both our resources ourselves: the money – which is not the main point – and the idealism of those working for the patients – which is the main resource.

Conclusion

Let us save this resource. If we do not let us be alienated, it will be unlimited.