The clock shows 1:45 p.m., this Thursday, August 10, at Chartres hospital. Eyes riveted on a computer screen, in the reception desk, doctor Abdessamed Saddar, head of emergencies, observes the dashboard of the service. At a glance, the doctor can assess the level of activity, in real time.
A geolocation tool makes it possible to know precisely at what level of care each patient is located, provided with a bracelet.
premium The emergency room of Chartres hospital suffers but resists the summer
The thirteen examination boxes of the long circuit, reserved for the most serious pathologies, likely to give rise to hospitalization, are all occupied. Three patients wait on stretchers in a hallway.
“The examination boxes are full. This means that there is tension. A man has been waiting for four hours. We are saturated, but the situation remains under control. We are not refusing anyone.”
doctor Abdessamed Saddar (head of the emergency department at Chartres hospital)
Once their administrative registration has been completed, the patients pass in front of the reception nurse, who assesses the degree of seriousness of their pathology in order to graduate the treatment, from the most urgent to the least urgent. On the dashboard, colors are associated with this severity index, from red for vital emergencies, to blue for bobology.
Very tense situation in the emergency room of Chartres hospital in the face of the influx of patients
The short-term hospitalization unit, which depends on emergencies, is also regularly full, for lack of sufficient hospital places.
Yvon Le Tilly, Deputy Director of Chartres Hospitals, says:
It is characteristic of emergencies to have sustained activity. The challenge is to stabilize the workforce.
After a complicated summer of 2022, marked by a staff strike in June and restricted access to vital emergencies at night, from July 13 to 27, 2022, the situation remains “critical in terms of nursing staff”, raise Marylène Lorin and Amélie Brémaud , the two health executives of the service.
But unlike last year, when the management had been forced to call in emergency reinforcements to replace the numerous sick leaves, no exceptional measures had to be put in place this summer.
Pierre Best, the director of the Chartres hospital, hopes that the partial closure of the emergency room will be the “shortest possible”
The emergencies operate with thirty-five nurses (full-time equivalent) instead of the forty-two who should theoretically be assigned to the duty roster. “We have recruited six nurses since the end of June, but four positions remain vacant and there are three maternity leaves which are not replaced, for lack of applications”, specifies Amélie Brémaud.
However, she can count on the support of an additional nurse, day and night, who comes down from the floors, from a department where summer activity is slow.
This is far from the case in the emergency room, which recorded 3,615 visits in July, or 9% more than in July 2022.
“Medical desertification is even more felt when general practitioners are on leave. We receive many patients who require a doctor’s consultation and come out of our service the same day. Their number has increased by 16%, compared to July 2022. “
doctor Abdessamed Saddar (head of the emergency department at Chartres hospital)
The unscheduled consultation service
Patients can sometimes be directed to unscheduled consultations, provided by emergency physicians, in a dedicated space, near the hall of the Louis-Pasteur hospital. This service is offered Monday to Friday, from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. (by appointment via Doctolib) and in the afternoon, without an appointment, from 2 p.m. to 6 p.m. Consultations are limited to forty per day.
City doctors take over, in the evenings and on weekends, within the on-call medical center, where regulation, via the 15, was put in place at the start of 2023, after the angry movement of general practitioners who denounced, in particular, problems of insecurity.
To reduce waiting times for certain examinations, a third scanner, exclusively dedicated to emergencies and cardiology, should be operational at the end of 2023. The equipment is eagerly awaited.
Helen Bonnet
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