Hospital of the Sisters of Mercy Linz

Ordensklinikum Linz GmbH Sisters of Charity
legal form	GmbH
founding	1841
Seat	Linz, Seilerststätte 4, 4010 Linz
management	Walter Kneidinger, Christian Lampl, Elisabeth Bräutigam, Rosa Schwarzbauer
Number of employees	1,955
Website	www.ordensklinikum.at

Main entrance of the Sisters of Mercy Hospital (2019)

Relief on the south side of the clinic

48.2994204 14.2889136Coordinates: 48 ° 17 ′ 57.9 ″ N , 14 ° 17 ′ 20.1 ″ E

The Hospital of the Sisters of Mercy Linz was a hospital in Linz that was founded in 1841 by the Order of the Sisters of Mercy of Saint Vincent von Paul - Gumpendorf and operated until 2016. Since the merger with the Linz Hospital of the Elisabethinen on January 1, 2017, it has belonged to the Ordensklinikum Linz .

Departments and medical specialties

The hospital of the Sisters of Mercy (from Saint Vincent von Paul, Vincentinen von Gumpendorf) has three medical specialties: oncology , orthopedics , paediatrics .

There are a total of 13 specialist departments and 6 institutes:

Departments

General and Visceral Surgery
Gynecology and obstetrics
ENT
Internal 1, Internal Oncology, Hematology and Gastroenterology
Internal 2
Orthopedics
Paediatrics
Palliative care unit
Plastic, aesthetic and reconstructive surgery
Acute geriatrics and remobilization
Radio-oncology
Pediatric urology
urology

Institutes of nuclear medicine, anesthesia, clinical psychology, radiology, physical medicine, clinical pathology

Medical centers oncology: pancreas center, breast health center, intestinal health center, gynecological tumor center, head and neck tumor center, prostate center

Other medical centers: hernia reference center, pelvic floor center, endoscopy center, children's center, PET-CT center, thyroid center, endoprosthetics center

history

Bishop Zeigler laid the foundation stone of the house

The foundation stone of the hospital was laid on May 25, 1841 by Bishop Gregorius Ziegler. The house was designed for 36 beds, 18 of which were for women. After his death, Bishop Ziegler bequeathed a considerable sum to the hospital. The first Merciful Sisters arrived in Linz in October. Under the leadership of Superior Cäcilia, born in the noble Gilleis family , the five sisters were initially quartered in the bishopric. Due to a lack of funds, the hospital was initially opened provisionally with twelve beds. Before the official inauguration on May 30, 1842, the number increased to the planned 36 beds. In June 40 patients could be enrolled - in total, 332 patients were treated in 1842. Over the next six years, the number of patients rose steadily to 786 annual admissions. The number of Sisters of Charity had also increased - in the year after the inauguration there were already 12 Sisters working in the hospital. In 1848 the number had risen to 17.

From 1842 the Bohemian homeopath and professor Simon Reiss was in a leading position as a primary professor at the hospital. He was also editor of the Austrian magazine for homeopathy founded by Wilhelm Fleischmann in 1844 . With him, the then progressive approach to healing began to shape the work of the Sisters of Mercy. The hospital achieved national recognition and was considered almost as much a "laboratory of homeopathy" as the order's hospital in Gumpendorf , where Fleischmann himself worked, and at whose suggestion Reiß had been given his position in Linz. For the next sixty years, the Barmherzigen Schwestern hospital in Linz was one of the most respected homeopathic clinics in German-speaking countries. In a homeopathic guide published in 1856, the hospital was mentioned accordingly. The establishment of a surgical department in 1901 by the new director Kern and the surgeon Dr. Karl Urban changed the orientation of the hospital towards surgery at the expense of homeopathy. In 1901 a total of 90 surgical operations were performed.

During the First World War , Dr. Urban the management of the hospital. The number of beds was increased to 300 beds and the house was integrated into the care and rehabilitation of the wounded. The surgical department also went through significant developments during this time, so the number of operations increased, which was continued even after the end of the war. In the mid-1920s, around 3,000 operations were performed annually. In the spring of 1926 a new construction of the operating theaters was started, which had become necessary due to the changed requirements and priorities. In addition, the kitchen of the house was expanded. The medical wing was opened in June 1927. Due to the many strikes that were the order of the day as a result of the precarious social turmoil, construction was severely delayed. In the course of the new building, the house now had 400 beds. In the following year a nurses' school was added, in which new nurses were trained, which put the training of secular employees on an equal footing with the training of religious sisters. Karl Urban resigned as chief surgeon in 1938 and Raimund Wimmer, previously head of the nerve department and a staunch National Socialist , took his place.

When the National Socialists came to power, Dr. Wimmer not only installed a hospital director who was acceptable to the regime, the sisters themselves were also subordinated to the Red Cross and the traditional feeding of the poor was banned. From the beginning of the war, a wing was set up as a "reserve hospital". As a result, many rooms were reorganized:

the previous children's ward was reduced in size
a new women's ward was opened in the attic
In 1941 a laboratory was set up
in 1942 the hospital wing was enlarged

When the bombing of the city of Linz began on July 1, 1944, patients and the entire internal department were moved to Bad Hall . Air raid shelters were later created in the basement of the house. In April 1945 there was no longer any patient care in the regular above-ground rooms. The operation was carried out in a makeshift operating room in the protected basement.

After the end of the war, the Sisters of Charity got involved in looking after prisoners from the Mauthausen concentration camp . In December 1948 the nursing school was able to reopen. In addition, a residential building was built for the students. In 1954, the Upper Austrian Catholic hospitals founded a community of interests in which the Sisters of Mercy Hospital participated. Comprehensive structural measures were initiated between 1963 and 1966, the number of beds was increased to 550 beds and the nurses' quarters were also expanded - now each sister was given a single room. In the meantime, the proportion of denominational nurses has steadily decreased. In 1979 there were 795 nurses in the Sisters of Mercy Hospital, of whom 137 were nurses. In 1997 the nursing school was renamed "School for General Health and Nursing". A bachelor's degree was set up and the cooperation with the University of Applied Sciences Vienna was established. By 2016, a total of 2,500 qualified nurses had obtained their diplomas at the facility.

In April 2016 it was announced that the Hospital of the Sisters of Mercy will merge with the Hospital of the Elisabethinen Linz to form the Linz Ordensklinikum . The merger took place on January 1, 2017. In December 2019, the hospital was awarded the Climate Protection Prize of the Ministry for Sustainability and Tourism . The award related to the house's new air conditioning system, whose new control system saves 270,000 kilowatt hours of electricity annually .