Views of the Presidents of National European Pediatric Societies on Evolving Challenges of Child Health Care

The article discusses the evoilving challenges of child care in Europe. The poor organization of first-access care for children for nights and weekends was found to be the Achilles heel of primary care, leading to an increased risk of inadequate care by physicians with a lack of training in pediatrics. Second, inadequate referral of young patients to outpatient clinics in children’s hospitals was emphasized to be an important vulnerable element of child care, which may lead to unnecessary admissions of patients and further workload for hospital teams. In addition, most European countries reported to lack well-established pathways for a child with common conditions such as earache during outof-working hours. Thus, it was further emphasized that classic questions like “who, where, when, how, why” would need to be resolved in all those areas—especially rural ones—where an adequate service is not offered during nights and weekends.