REPORTAGE. One year after the start of the pandemic, SARS-CoV-2 required liberal physiotherapists to permanently rethink the reception of their patients, without however profoundly disrupting consultations. Immersion in a practice in Vincennes (Val-de-Marne) where the coronavirus is still present from head to toe.
The coronavirus is omnipresent without being. This is the ambivalent observation that emerges after a morning spent at the office of the four physiotherapists in the Diderot district in Vincennes. Impossible for these caregivers, for whom touching is a profession, to protect themselves completely from the virus. On the front line, they had to adapt. April 24, 2020 council of the professional order precisely recommended to professionals to space each consultation of about twenty minutes, to ventilate the room of work and to disinfect it.
But in June, faced with the asynchronous rhythms of the various practitioners in the practice and for the sake of economic viability, the health beat went by the wayside. ” This forced us to drastically reduce our number of daily patients. », Remembers Vincent Aufrères, one of the cabinet members. Exit the break and return to ordinary work habits. With some upheavals, however. Windows permanently ajar, approximate disinfection of the medical examination table and traditional wearing of a mask: the Vincentian team has thoroughly rethought the reception of its patients after the first confinement, which had forced the liberal quartet to unemployment technical.
The sock, a fatal weapon in the face of the coronavirus?
But entering the cabinet is far from the most striking change. From the outside, the facade doesn’t look pretty. Its opaque windows, dressed in gray, suggest a cabinet like any other. Yet after crossing the doorstep, you enter a disused waiting room: a transitional airlock intended to lead you to an anti-Covid bubble. A ” protected area »From which the viscosity of the hydro-alcoholic gel and the removal of the shoe are not optional. If the first rule has become almost a ritual for everyone, the need to move around in socks raises questions.
Supposed to shield the practice from any traces of virus stored by the sole on its urban route, this new practice seems to have been adopted by the patient population. On the other hand, if she took this new fold without flinching, her toes sometimes appeared. Because between cotton and keratin, it is often the edge of the nail that has the last word. Whatever the case, the ban on shoes could be perpetuated in the long term, as the dynamic Vincent Aufrères confides: ” It’s more pleasant to work in such conditions: our premises are much cleaner, every day. In May 2020, it was to avoid having to wash the floor daily, or even between each patient, as the new reviews vaguely suggested. Today, it has above all become a real question of well-being. »
A heady pandemic chorus on the lips of patients
Absent structuring, the coronavirus disrupts relatively little the treatment protocol of these masseurs. The firm nevertheless represents a microcosm in the time of Covid-19. During the exercises, the tongues are loosened. Not a consultation without its share of allusions to vaccination. Not a morning without a patient, with a reluctant mask, letting his mouth show the tip of his nose. Not half an hour of consultation without the consequences of the pandemic on the individual, the economy or traffic being mentioned. A septuagenarian launches: ” With the re-containment, there are fewer people on the streets. It’s easier to park to come to appointments. It would be nice if it stayed like that! And another patient admits to violating the travel restrictions. In short, Covid always, frivolity nowhere. Even meteorological trivialities are relegated to the background. That is to say. Externalizing negative thoughts, between four cream-colored walls, is also transforming physiotherapists, for a moment, into psychologists.
New activity if there is one, the care provided to patients cured of Covid-19 is also changing working habits in the office. ” Each colleague and I have or have had a patient in post-Covid rehabilitation since last May. At the moment, there are two who are being treated in the cabinet », Reports Vincent Aufrères. That is to say nearly 5% of the total number of patients carried by the structure. But the measures taken are not always enough to allay the fears of some patients, often at risk, reluctant to return to a medical den conducive to nosocomial infections, contracted in the medical environment.
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