Diane Keil practices today in Belgium, Nicolas Nieder in Luxembourg and Thomas Schmutz in Switzerland. The three doctors today sign an open letter to a “sick hospital”. They left their post in the emergency services of hospitals in the Grand Est in recent years without losing the link with their colleagues. Like many, they were able to read the articles that the press has devoted, in recent weeks, to the flight of French caregivers and doctors, especially those in emergencies, to foreign countries. According to them, “to bring back to the sole question of salary, the departure of emergency physicians aims, in vain, to camouflage the root of the problem. “Without judgment, the three expatriates testify to emergency services which have been falling apart for years:” The exhaustion of personnel is not linked to the practice of emergency medicine but to the excess of work, care, of patients who thrombose the wards due to a lack of available hospital beds. The patients, often elderly, stagnate on stretchers because the hospital is full, sometimes for days or entire nights in inhumane conditions. The bed management units did not change that. Even if the state tries to find solutions, reversing the trend will probably take many years, ”they analyze.
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Incapacity
For these practitioners, “the CHR Metz-Thionville, flagship of Moselle hospitals, is probably the most affected in Lorraine”. The reason ? “Victim of his own success,” they explain, “he has seen his unscheduled activity explode in recent years. But the recruitments are not there, for lack of candidates. The signatories of the letter still believe that emergency physicians have their share of responsibility: “In wanting to treat everything, we isolated ourselves from other specialties. “” Powerless, we have been the actors and witnesses of the slow breakdown of the French public service. We have seen many colleagues leave, tired. Let’s be honest: most emergency physicians who left their careers or left the CHR, went to other specialties, or to smaller hospitals because they no longer saw themselves in this ‘hospital-business’. ‘. ”
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A family
It is fatigue, physical and psychological exhaustion that pushes emergency responders to leave the ship. “The doctors reluctantly leave to protect themselves. It is extremely painful to leave an emergency department. A team spirit is forged there that does not exist anywhere else. “” Working abroad means rediscovering a hospitable benevolence that we had known at the start of our career. Restoring it in Moselle hospitals will reverse the trend of departures. This will condition the return of expatriates. “
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