Beim Arzt — At the Doctor's

Getting seen, and what to do when the surgery is closed

German medicine is good and its access points are not obvious, so knowing which door to use saves both time and money. For anything routine, your Hausarzt. Appointments can take weeks for a specialist, and there is a national appointment service — the number 116117 — which can also place you with a specialist within a target period. The same number is the Bereitschaftsdienst, the out-of-hours service, and it is the right call in the evening or at the weekend for something that cannot wait until Monday but is not an emergency. 112 is the emergency number and die Notaufnahme is the hospital emergency department. Using the Notaufnahme for a three-week cough is discouraged and increasingly filtered, so the honest triage is: 112 for an emergency, 116117 out of hours, the Hausarzt otherwise. Pharmacies, die Apotheke, also rotate a night duty — der Apothekennotdienst — and a pharmacist in Germany gives real advice, which makes them a sensible first stop for something minor. Two practical habits. Take the Gesundheitskarte every time; without it a practice may ask you to pay privately and reclaim later. And say at the desk how long you have had the problem, because urgency affects what you are offered — a three-week cough is treated differently from a three-day one, which is why the doctor's first question is about time. The last line of the dialogue is the real advice. Germans are, by the standards of many countries, quick to see a doctor and quick to be signed off, and the system expects it: paid sick leave from the first day, continued pay for six weeks, and no expectation that you work through illness. Waiting three weeks with a cough because it seemed too small to bother anyone is a habit worth unlearning here.