Diplomat as well as nurse

Press, 14 November 1978, Page 16

Diplomat as well as nurse

Hlome & People

WHITEHORNS WORLD

Katharine Whitehorn

. When a child is sick it goes into hospital — which is fine if it can come out again fairly soon. But w’..< about the long-stay children, whose only reason for being there may be that they may have to eat-*-or not ■ eat — certain things to I stay well and grow up unj damaged? The nurses of the Universitats Kinderklinik in Berlin thought they could improve on the alternative of simply keeping the children in hospital, or waving them goodbye with dubious results. For the last 18 months Sister Elizabeth Lommatesch has

I been working a 60-hour ( week, driving for two i hours a day to help the ( parents of such children i to look after them at I home.

It is not. she stresses, ; just a question of her giv- | ing them treatments, though she does; her aim is to train the parents to give the medical care for themselves. The doctors in charge of the project, Professors Helge and Weber, say she is quite as much a diplomat as a nurse. Sometimes the parents will bring every other sick child in the family to her because she is more approachable than the doctor. And one boy seemed perfectly all right when he was in hospital, but relapsed every time he was i declared cured and sent i home; it was the nurse j who ferreted out the fact ’ that his parents had never I actually given him the medicine, and somehow I talked them into letting | him have it. ' The doctors say they ' have learned a lot about | what goes on at home.

The theory is that all Germans are affluent and middle class and articulate; but that does not include the hapless Turkish “guest workers’' —

immigrant labourers. Sister Elizabeth often enough finds that they live eight to a room, and are too much in awe of the doctor to talk to him properly in his surgery; they do not understand much German in any case. At home, there are often teemage children round to translate.

There are similar schemes elsewhere, of course: there is one in : Paris for diabetic children; such task force learns exist in Tel Aviv and Brussels; there is one for the dying in South London. But this is the first one for children in Geri any, and the medical team are hoping it will catch on more widely. Actually, there i.> even a trend for the treatment of children to move back into the home; it seems that in Germany the young pediatricians are so numerous that in order to attract patients — you are not going to believe this — they go around saying they’re keen to do house visits. 1 would not want to give the impression, though, that it is always a success. There was one boy who did not seem to be thriving on the digitalis he needed for his heart condition. No one could make out why, till Sister Elizabeth found the digitalis in the mess qn his modelling tabic — well, some of it, that is. The rest was accounted for by the fact that one of the cats had died and the > others were spaced out of ' their fur. They finally found a i safe cupboard for the i stuff, the boy. improved: I ! daresay she coped with 1 the cats’ withdrawal symptoms too. O.F.N.S. copyright, i