The entrance area has now been completed – an important detail when the State Secretary in the NRW Ministry of Culture and Science is to be duly welcomed. Annette Storsberg was only one of many guests looking round the new rooms after the welcome speeches. The state has put 90 million Euros into their construction and initial fit-out (66.2 million in the construction alone). It is all part of the NRW-wide modernisation programme “Medmop”, which has a budget of 2.2 billion Euros. The construction, which started in 2015, was largely completed on schedule and completely within budget.

Consolidation of departments

Wolfgang Holzgreve, the director of the University Hospital and Medical Director had pointed out that combining the neurology, psychiatric and psychosomatic departments in a six-storey building with a considerable 12,800 square metres of useable space makes technical sense. “The fact that these disciplines are moving closer together is a decision for the patient.” The disciplines have large overlaps. An example: in neurology, which deals with nerve diseases, doctors treat Parkinson’s, multiple sclerosis and other muscle diseases. These can put such a strain on patients that they become depressed and so need psychiatric care.

In psychosomatic medicine, doctors focus on the relationships between body and mind and treat eating disorders, nervous disorders, depression and patients who are burned out, for example. The GA has already reported on a new day clinic for young people aged between 17 and 30.

In short, the building, with its outpatients and therapy centre and its ward beds, represents an effort towards a more intensive interdisciplinary exchange, which is “not always self-evident” but which according to Holzgreve is imperative. When he started out as a doctor, psychiatry in particular was often housed in separate buildings or even outside the campus.

(Original text: Philipp Königs. Translation: kc)