When Sabine Kern (63) retires at the end of April, she will be looking back on four decades in pediatric nursing. She started in the intensive care unit of the children's hospital in 1979 and has cared for countless children and young people since then - many of them before and after a transplant. During her career, she has experienced transplant medicine (almost) from its beginnings to the present day. It started with kidneys, then came livers, hearts and lungs. "At the moment, we have a relatively large number of children with liver transplants," reports Sabine Kern. As an intensive care nurse, she always has two small patients in her care. Some are only a few months old. "I get to know some of them long before the transplant," says Sabine Kern. These are children, for example, who are waiting for a new heart and have to spend the time until the transplant in the intensive care unit because they are in a very critical condition. There are always extreme situations between life and death on the ward. "Discussions with colleagues and supervision help, but you also have to find a way to deal with it yourself," she explains.