The return of a “whistleblower” surgeon after two years of suspension has caused a serious internal crisis. Thirty caregivers are on sick leave and several have resigned.
“I intend to leave the hospital”. Surgeon in the intercommunal hospital center of the Southern Alps in Gap, Dr Jérôme Atger has decided to resign. Like several of his colleagues, they want to warn about the crisis that Chicas has gone through in recent weeks. A demonstration was also organized this Friday by the collective For the future of Chicas.
“I am not confident anymore”
Since the announcement of the return of Dr Raouf Hammami after two years of suspension, part of the staff is standing against this decision. This doctor is accused of having caused a serious internal crisis after denouncing the surgical practices of a colleague, Dr. Gilles Norotte.
From 2018, he had questioned the disc cementoplasty, considered “invalid” by a learned society and which is the subject of a criminal investigation for lack of information to patients.
“I no longer have confidence in the structure, in the supervision,” says Dr Jérôme Atger today. I haven’t slept since Dr Hammami was reinstated. “
Health and social consequences
“The hospital should normally be a place of trust, serenity, for the safety of patients. This safety and serenity, we no longer have”, says the surgeon, while around thirty hospital caregivers is on sick leave.
Like the collective For the future of Chicas, Jérôme Atger fears “health consequences” because of this “dramatic situation”. According to the group, this internal crisis is causing “a breakdown in trauma care”, and more than 500 consultations and 200 interventions have been canceled or postponed.
The doctor also fears “in the long term social consequences”. “I do not imagine that Dr. Hammami who promised to destroy this orthopedic service can rebuild it in the state of mind in which it has always been,” said the surgeon.
Considered a “whistleblower”
Cleared from customs by a national disciplinary council, Dr Raouf Hammami, was recognized on March 10 as a “whistleblower” by the Defender of Rights. He had been the victim of “reprisals” from local health officials for having denounced from 2018 the actions of his colleague Gilles Norotte, according to the national institution.
In the process, the National Center for the Management of Hospital Practitioners (CNG, which depends on the Ministry of Health) decided on April 9 not to take any sanction against Dr Hammami.
“As regrettable as some of the terms you have used or some of your attitudes may be, your behavior cannot be qualified as faulty,” writes its director in a decision which AFP has obtained a copy of.
Dr Hammami greeted the decision with “relief and satisfaction,” he told AFP, saying he was “cleared of any accusation of harassment, threat or inappropriate behavior.”
