These, according to Dr Ratheiser, are the forgotten foundations of crisis management on which humans and organisations are founded. This is what Dr Ratheiser has learned during many a crisis as head of Intensive Care. The stories he has to tell us prove this ever so convincingly.

The years Dr Ratheiser spent as head of an Intensive Care Unit confronting life-threatening cases, taught him the importance of recognition, esteem, and respect, which form the groundwork that will lead to the success and growth of humans and organisations. Whenever these are lacking, no amount of money poured into the scheme would be capable of saving it. Nowhere is this so drastically obvious as in a hospital, where doctors are responsible for human lives.

On Dr Ratheiser: In every doctor’s CV there should be the remark, “Has read Dr Ratheiser/Has not read Dr Ratheiser” (University Professor Dr Christian Wolf, University of Vienna for Medicine)

About the author:

Klaus Ratheiser was born in 1957. After completion of his A-Levels he went on to study medicine in Vienna and Innsbruck, obtaining his doctorate in 1983. His interest in intensive care medicine saw him at the Institute for Anaesthesiology at the University of Zurich Hospital. He then trained as a specialist for internal medicine at the Barmherzigen Brüder Hospital in St Veit an der Glan and finally in Vienna. He has done research work at the University of Yale, New Haven, Connecticut, at Cornell Medical College in New York and was visiting professor at the University of Pisa. He has worked in the intensive care unit of the University Clinic for Internal Medicine IV at the Vienna General Hospital since 1991, and was appointed its head in 1995. He has been senior university lecturer for internal medicine since December 1998.