“As a woman, you have a different way of managing. It is important for me to be well surrounded by employees, and I place a lot of emphasis on dialogue. There will be no top-down governance,” said the new director general of the CHL, Martine Goergen, in an interview with RTL.
According to Goergen, there is still a lack of women in leadership positions, both in Luxembourg and abroad. “It requires a lot of self-investment to get things done,” she adds in light of International Women’s Day this Friday.
Dr Martine Goergen succeeds Romain Nati in the role of hospital director as of March 2024. Goergen has been the CHL’s Medical Director for the past six years. She previously worked as a surgeon and first came to the institution two decades ago. She is the first woman at the helm of a Luxembourg hospital.
Goergen will continue her work as a surgeon to maintain contact with patients.
“The lack of nursing staff and doctors is an European problem,” says Goergen, “something that is much less common in Asia or South America.”
“To counter this issue, the work of staff should be more valued to boost attractiveness,” says the director.
The fact that the doctors at the CHL are employees with a fixed salary and not freelancers brings a great deal of solidarity. However, the CHL is less attractive than other hospitals in the country for certain specialisations, notably radiology, cardiology or anaesthesia.
Contracts were amended accordingly to make these activities more desirable the director explains.
Especially at a time when the demand for work/life balance is increasing, it is necessary that hospital workplaces are strengthened and doctors do not work in small practices, where there is no emergency guard.
A hospital offers different medicines and as a doctor you come across other pathologies, thus broadening your horizons. But politics also has to play a role to ensure that even the small practices remain.
Goergen advocates for small structures in the countryside that function as hospital antennas. For example, in Marnach on the Nordstross this type of system had positive results.
It would be very important to finally recognise the specialisations of pediatricians underlines the CHL director.
In the children’s clinic, there are different “subspecialities”, for example a children’s pulmonologist, a children’s nephrologist and a children’s gastroenterologist, and these roles would not be recognised here in Luxembourg. Accordingly, the hospital cannot charge what it needs, according to the director.
