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ePaper created 2014-05-09, 12:31:49 | version 1.30.01
Doc Stop - Working with talent and skill
38 Issue One 2014 Focus DocStop für Europäer e. V. is a registered charity that has set it- self the goal of offering medical assistance to professional truck drivers who become ill when they are driving in Germany. Any other worker would have the opportunity to visit a doctor if he or she felt unwell, whereas long-distance drivers found this highly complicat- ed before 2007. Whilst driving on the motorway, they first had to discover where there was a doctor or a hos- pital in the vicinity, and then they had to try to park a 40-tonne truck in front of the medical practice at the same time as keeping their fingers crossed that they would be able to get an appointment without having to wait for hours. DocStop hotline 01805 112 024 Doc- Stop represents an el- egant and straightfor- ward solution to all these problems. Any- one who feels unwell whilst on the road, whether it be headache, back pain or toothache, simply has to dial the DocStop hotline. The call will be answered by an employee of ADAC-TruckService, the company that staffs the hotline, who will ask what the driver’s current location is. Then, the best point of contact will be selected from a network currently com- prising about 700 doctors and hospitals. The driver will be given the phone number and information about which is the nearest DocStop base – for example at a truck stop, a motorway service station or a haulage company. There, the driver can park his or her truck and will generally be transported for an outpatient consultation by a shuttle service. All the doctors who work with DocStop have committed to provide treatment at short notice, the costs of which will be borne by the health insurance company. At present, about 400 drivers use this service every month. All they have to do to qualify is to put a sticker on their dashboard which displays the phone number to ring when they need it. The only costs incurred are for the phone calls. It started with a meeting in the café The inventor and honor- ary “locomotive” of DocStop is Rainer Bernickel who worked for the motorway police department in Münster as a Chief Inspector until 2007, and was involved as a road safety consult- ant. In 2000, he estab- lished a regular meet- ing for police officers and long-distance truck drivers during which they could exchange views about their every- day work and listen to one another – the ob- jective was cooperation instead of confronta- tion. This idea which stated life at the motor- way services in Münster has now become a ser- vice that spans almost the entire country. On every first Wednesday in the month, between 15 and 45 drivers, entrepreneurs, hauliers and police officers meet in 14 of Germany’s federal states to swap experience and talk about their everyday problems. One of the problems raised concerned the lack of medical care available when on the road. Volunteer members only The members of the association, just fewer than 20 in number, work as volunteers to ensure that all donations in kind and monetary donations exclusively benefit the DocStop organisation. The low number of members offers a significant advantage: the association can make decisions very quickly and put them into practise. Otherwise, Joachim Fehren- kötter would not have been prepared to become the organisa- tion’s chairman. As the CEO of Fehrenkötter Transport & Logis- tik GmbH, he actually has enough on his plate but nevertheless he Photos:FrankJasper,DocStop DocStop – Working with talent and skill The idea is so persuasive and simple that you cannot help asking why no one thought of DocStop before 2007. “I work in the background to make sure that DocStop keeps running,” explains Joachim Fehrenkötter.