Press prize presented by the Austrian Medical Association

Since 1975, the ÖÄK has awarded the “Austrian Medical Association Prize for Special Journalistic Achievements in the Interest of the Health Care System” to journalistic works that present health policy issues in a balanced and comprehensible manner. For 2023, Jenny Laimer and Patrick Schwanzer from ATV and Andrea Eder from ORF can look forward to the prestigious award. Johannes Steinhart, President of the Austrian Medical Association, emphasized the importance of health policy reporting in his laudatory speech: “Precisely because good medical care never loses importance and concerns everyone, it is important to highlight deficiencies in the health system, but also special services, in the media and one to make it accessible to the general public. Faithfulness to the facts and an intensive examination of the subject matter characterize high-quality reporting, as well as accuracy and well-founded research.”

In their ATV documentary “Land without Doctors – How Sick is Austria’s Health System”, Laimer and Schwanzer dealt with the problem of a lack of doctors in the public health system in a very detailed and clear way. They discussed the reasons why many health insurance offices – especially in rural areas – are empty and why patients often have to struggle with excessively long waiting times for a doctor’s appointment. And why hospitals are sometimes so overloaded that patients often have to wait months for surgery appointments. In addition to patients, health experts and community politicians, they also let doctors have their say, “who authentically and comprehensibly reveal the current deficiencies in the health insurance system: overload, constant time pressure, bureaucracy and at the same time the bad feeling of not caring that much about the patients “To be able to care in a way that corresponds to one’s own standards and self-image as a doctor,” emphasized Steinhart.

Andrea Eder conveyed the message in her documentary “Between Life and Death. Everyday life in the intensive care unit” from the ORF series “kreuz und quer” is a very impressive picture of the top performances that are achieved day after day in an intensive care unit. It illustrates the physical and emotional limits that intensive care physicians and nurses encounter in their work. They also addressed difficult ethical considerations in cases where patients can only be kept alive with the help of devices, and showed that a decision about further treatment is not made lightly, but is a lengthy and complex process. Steinhart: “The personal suffering of individual patients is also shown very impressively and authentically, often moving between fear, despair, hope and happiness. But also the way in which doctors and nurses deal with their great responsibility and the expectations and hopes of their patients.”