School doctor
The school doctor represents the special health interests of children and adolescents in the "company" school (and kindergarten ). In the sense of a "company medical" activity, he should work with parents , teachers , school authorities and other doctors to protect children and young people from possible (operational) health risks, to carry out the legally required examinations and to participate in the educational and educational mission to promote health to be implemented by school (see school health ).
Employment relationship
In most cases, the school doctor is a pediatrician employed by the public health service in the child and youth health service department , who is appointed for schools in accordance with the school law or the health service law of the respective federal state. He can also be a permanent member of the college (e.g. in Waldorf schools).
Area of responsibility
The school doctor deals with the following tasks, among others:
- School entrance examinations are carried out before the new pupils start school in order to identify diseases that require treatment (e.g. visual disorders) and to be able to treat them before school starts, to identify developmental disorders in good time and, if necessary, to define a medically justified school support requirement.
- Health reporting (GBE): the municipal GBE is a not insignificant concern of school doctors, as the anonymized data and findings they collect (partly from cross-sectional examinations ) can be the basis for well-founded municipal health reports .
- Regular check-ups: mostly in the fourth and ninth year of school to assess the general health development and to prevent deficiency symptoms or to identify any health problems that are already present at an early stage.
- Examinations and advice for schoolchildren, for example in the form of school consultations , are carried out in order to offer individual, pediatric or company medical advice and to identify possible behavioral and developmental abnormalities at an early stage and to suggest treatment.
- Vaccinations of the pupils - especially the publicly recommended vaccinations according to the requirements of the Standing Vaccination Commission at the Robert Koch Institute - in consultation with the parents.
- Measures for school health care according to the Infection Protection Act
- Teaching health education or supporting the school / teacher in establishing (interdisciplinary) health-promoting teaching.
History of the school doctor
The first school doctors were hired in Germany at the end of the 19th century. A short time later, they were entrusted with the school enrollment examination , in which, among other things, they paid attention to the children's motor skills and physical maturity. From 1920, regular student examinations were introduced; Nationwide coverage of school doctor was since about 1925. While doctors previously chiefly with hygiene and infection-related problems or deficiencies and eye diseases had to deal with the children, they are now also socio-culturally related problems such as obesity , lack of exercise , addictive behavior , behavior problems or language impairments faced. In the German Democratic Republic (GDR), a specific form of continuing medical education was created in the early 1980s with the youth doctor .
Vincenz Czerny and his commitment to school doctors
The renowned Heidelberg cancer researcher Vincenz Czerny (1842–1916) advocated in 1903 that school doctors should carefully examine every student at the beginning and at the end of a school year and influence the determination of the timetable. Czerny considered 26 to 28 compulsory school hours per week to be the maximum that should be expected of the students from a school doctor's point of view. He noticed paleism, nervousness and curvature of the spine. On Czerny's recommendation, these diseases were made the subject of the first international congress on school hygiene, which took place in Nuremberg in 1904. Czerny also advocated that school doctors should protect the physically weak students against excessive demands. The lessons in the old languages at the grammar school should also be reduced to one hour a day, whereby the main emphasis should be placed on the understanding of the old writers and not on grammatical quibbles. Czerny thought that being too preoccupied with grammar was not suitable for children. The state has to ensure that the children not only thrive mentally but also physically during the compulsory school years. Czerny also called for relief for the teachers, so that overburdening them would not increase the stress on the students by six hard hours of sitting in one day with three to four hours of homework.
School doctor reform in Austria
In Austria, the school doctor system, as of 2019, has been under harsh criticism for several years. The main reason is the lack of uniform regulations on the competencies of school doctors in the individual federal states. Some of the tasks of school doctors are to be assigned to the school system (annual examination) and others to the health system (vaccinations). According to the critics, especially within the association of municipalities , this creates an inefficient and opaque cost structure. As an example it was mentioned that rooms within the school have to be made available for the examinations, but the health authorities have to pay for vaccinations. In addition, it should be unclear which decisions the Ministry of Health is allowed to make. Because of this criticism, the abolition of school doctors in Austria is discussed.
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c Vincenz Czerny: On the development of surgery during the 19th century and its relationship to teaching. Academic speech to celebrate the birthday of the most blessed Grand Duke Karl Friedrich on November 21, 1903, Heidelberg, Universitäts Buchdruckerei von J. Hörnig, 1903, p. 28, p. 33.
- ^ The school doctor in investigation Wiener Zeitung on January 23, 2019
- ↑ School Doctors Ordinance in assessment of the local authority on August 29, 2019 - Bernhard Haubenberger