By Ronan Chérel – [email protected]
With 70 daily passages for more than a week, emergencies are already entering the season. Doctor Sauveur Méglio calls on future patients to be “understanding”, or even to avoid clogging up the service
Lhe foreboding of a touristically strong 2021 summer season may take the turn of a tangible reality in one marker: that of the care provided by the emergency department of the Royan Atlantique hospital center. “We have recorded 70 passages per day on average for a week. We already have patients in our door-beds, waiting for a hospitalization place ”, noted Thursday 1is July Doctor Sauveur Méglio.
The head of the emergency department reads an abnormal data in this period and the possible sign of a busy season, positively for the economy, negatively for emergencies. There will still be flocking there this summer, life-threatening accident victims, fractures, heart failure, but also sun-burnt “crayfish”, tooth crazies who will not be able to wait for the scheduled appointment the next day with their dentist, clumsy fishermen sticking their hook in a finger …
The “bobology” weighs
Magnanimous, Sauveur Méglio relieves guilt by anticipation of anyone who would be tempted to resort to emergencies when the advice of a general practitioner would be just as appropriate. “I share the analysis of Pierre Carli, medical director of Samu in Paris, who considers that the problem is the lack of downstream beds, not bobology, as it is called. Behind the difficulties of the emergency services is the extent of the closures of hospital beds in recent decades.
But if “bobology”, the influx of non-urgent cases, is not the only one responsible for the evils of emergencies, even by a modest and diplomatic formula, Sauveur Méglio leaves an almost solemn appeal to the population, both local and summer: “ People need to understand so that we can take good care of certain serious cases, certain pathologies must not go through us. “
Three-way emergencies
Sauveur Méglio was sworn in. Head of emergencies, he assumes. “We are not refusing anyone! Any patient passing the entrance to the service will therefore be seen by a doctor. That being said, when the head of emergencies points to “certain pathologies (which) should not go” through the emergency room, obviously, he is referring to this “third of emergency visits that could be treated elsewhere”. In the office of a general practitioner, or even at a pharmacist. Or, between 8 a.m. and 8 p.m., in the emergency room of the Pasteur clinic in Royan and the Polyclinique de Saint-Georges-de-Didonne.
A third of emergency room visits could be treated elsewhere.
Because during the day, since 2005, emergency medical treatment has been shared between the three healthcare establishments, associated within a GCS, a health cooperation group. The summer management of the medical emergency will also have to rely on the partners of the public hospital. Sauveur Méglio calls for him, in any case, to avoid Malakoff’s emergencies from saturating.
All those involved in the emergency met recently, with a representative of the regional health agency. The Royan hospital center will not be the only one to experience tensions this summer. “Saintes, Jonzac should also experience staffing problems. For La Rochelle and Rochefort, that should be fine, but these services will not have the capacity to help the south of the department. “
Stretched workforce
While he is spreading out in front of him the planning of his service for the next two months, Sauveur Méglio receives a call. A doctor defected. He should have been in charge of the “post-emergencies” of the 1is to July 16, but does not feel comfortable in this specialty which is not his. The emergency manager takes note. One more puzzle. The summer schedule shows six days in July and four days in August during which hospital emergencies will rely on only one senior emergency doctor, when the operation of the service requires at least two.
At each 12-hour call, in theory, two senior doctors are mobilized, assisted by interns, students at the end of their course under the status of “internship”, three nursing assistants and six nurses during the day (3 la night). A single senior emergency doctor on the job, this is the risk that the service faces without his manager if he has to intervene in an accident, only a senior doctor can lead a team of the mobile emergency and resuscitation service. (Smur).
More than the previous summers, therefore, Sauveur Méglio is counting on the “good understanding” of the population, including on time, during the day, to go to one or other of the emergency services. “The clinics will have to support us, too. To hope for a hot summer, but without incident.
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