Religious sisters

“Many technologies are a great blessing”

Barbara Lehner has been Superior General of the Elisabethines Linz-Vienna since 2012.(Bild: © Harald Dostal / 2024)

How does nursing and care work at a time when social media is reducing the desire for personal contact? And where can technology help even in this sensitive area? The "Krone" spoke to Barbara Lehner about this on International Women's Day. The 67-year-old is Superior General of the Women's Order of the Elisabethines, whose basic mission is to care for the sick.

With a broad smile, Barbara Lehner welcomes the "Krone" to the interview on the occasion of International Women's Day. She graduated as a nurse in 1982, from 1992 she set up a nursing school, and since 2012 she has been the Superior General of the Elisabethines Linz-Vienna and thus the spiritual head of the hospital of the same name in Linz. Currently, 31 sisters of the order live and work in Linz and six in Vienna. The clergy take on various tasks in the Elisabethinen hospitals, for example in pastoral care, dietology or ECG.

Fewer and fewer sisters
The women's order has become steadily smaller in recent years. This is not the only change that Barbara Lehner has noticed: "We have lost the ability to keep things in our hearts and talk about them with trusted people before making a judgment. Today, you have to post everything immediately," she says, referring to social media. The new platforms have also reduced personal contact.

67-year-old Barbara Lehner lives and works at the Elisabethinen Hospital in Linz.(Bild: © Harald Dostal / 2024)

"Fortunately no robots yet"
However, this is very important in nursing, says Lehner: "Patients' need for human attention has remained. Fortunately, we don't have any robots in nursing yet." However, she emphasizes: "Many technologies are a great blessing" - for example in diagnostics or treatment.

And what can society as a whole learn from the Women's Order of the Elisabethines in times of change? "We have a meaningful mission that everyone works towards," says Lehner. "Caring for one another has a place in the community, the community provides security."