Viennese of the week

To the ungrateful Böhlerians: Thank you for everything!

Even in the chaos surrounding the closure plans, the staff at the Lorenz Böhler Hospital in Vienna are living up to what their bosses are actually obliged to do, day after day, without any consideration for themselves.

A public protest by Lorenz Böhler staff against the closure of their hospital was last planned for 8:30 am. However, anyone who actually arrived outside the hospital at 8.30 a.m. had already missed half of it: The "Böhlerians" had started the works meeting earlier - and ended it earlier too, so that they could be back with their patients as quickly as possible, including a pithy reminder from the works council not to dawdle on the way to their workplaces.

"Everything as usual"
It was not a pose for the media present: during a "Krone" local inspection the following day, when the chaos surrounding the closure plans had escalated even further, the patients interviewed all gave the same answer without exception: at the hospital appointment, "everything was as usual": friendly, empathetic, professional - from the head surgeon to the cleaning staff. There are probably not many hospitals in Vienna whose patients want everything to remain "as always".

It can't be the fault of the AUVA bosses: The current Director General (see Punch of the Week) was already conducting a feasibility study on how to get rid of the hospital back in 2015 - when he was somewhere in the middle of his career ladder at AUVA. The target date: 2025. How lucky for him that catastrophic fire safety deficiencies in the hospital are falling into his lap right now. Bad luck not only for the Böhler staff, but even more so for the hospital's 65,000 patients a year and the city, which now has to avert a supply crisis.

A hospital as a Gallic village of the indomitable
The hospital has always been a thorn in the side of the AUVA: it is something like the Gallic Asterix village in Austria's medical landscape and puts up with very little: no savings plans, no working time targets, no job cuts. And accident care is not a good business, even if it saves lives, as has just happened again at the last second after an abdominal puncture.

So you could say that the hospital staff ran blindly into their misfortune. But you could also say that they simply wanted to "do the right thing", regardless of themselves. For this, the Böhler team has at least earned the title of Wiener of the Week - and we have earned the right to let them do what they want to do and can do best when they are not interfered with: being there for others.