“Exhausted staff, patients in danger. “ For months, this warning has regularly appeared in the mouths of caregivers. Forced by the lack of staff and the closing of the beds, they would no longer be able to properly care for the sick. Risk of threatening their safety?
“It is not catastrophism”, supports Dr. Sébastien Harscoat, emergency doctor at the University Hospitals of Strasbourg (HUS). “The danger for patients is real and daily. We no longer deal, we fly over “, summarizes the doctor, who went on sick leave a few weeks ago “No longer be complicit in a system that encourages mistreatment”.
“The whole hospital is collapsing”
However, he acknowledges it: the impact of the hospital crisis on the quality of care is difficult to objectify. We speak only of the most dramatic cases, fortunately very rare. So this eighty-year-old was found lifeless last September, in the HUS emergency room after spending several hours on a stretcher. Over the course of the month, it was in Pau’s emergency room that another patient died, just hours after his arrival. The families have filed a complaint and investigations are underway to shed light on the circumstances of these deaths.
How many’ “accidents” of this kind have occurred in recent months? And to what extent are they attributable to lack of aid? Almost impossible to tell. Hospitals have been required to report since 2017 “Serious adverse events associated with treatment” (EIGS) to authorities via a reporting portal. The challenge ? Identify possible malfunctions to prevent their recurrence. “But we under-declare”assures Sébastien Harscoat, who insists: “Emergencies aren’t the only services affected. The whole hospital is collapsing. “
The resuscitator from Île-de-France, Stéphane (1), testifies to the difficulty of finding a place for stroke victims who need treatment in ultra-specialized units. “To say that patients are in danger would be excessive, he believes it anyway. But access to care becomes difficult and this difficulty can lead to the loss of opportunities. “
Pediatrics would not be spared. “Even children are in danger, thus warns Laure Dorey, general delegate of the Children’s Liver Diseases Association (AMFE), which brings together parents of children suffering from severe liver damage. According to her, the centers specialized in hepatology and pediatric liver transplantation, which are understaffed, are no longer able to guarantee optimal follow-up of all patients. “There is a lack of doctors, radiologists, anesthetists… ”, He lists.
“Defective bankruptcy of the state”
“Not a day goes by without a family warning us of a difficulty. The delays in obtaining a first appointment lengthen, while the intervention in the first thirty days of the child is sometimes decisive for his survival. Due to lack of space, some children are referred to other services or other hospitals that do not specialize in these pathologies. Post-transplant follow-up appointments for children are rescheduled, sometimes without a referral date, with the risk of complications not being detected in time … “
Last July, his association joined five others in sending the government a “precedence for negligent breach by the State”. “The fundamental right to health protection is no longer guaranteed in France”, to ensure these families, which have not received a response to date.
Patients also alert public authorities
A group was also created that brings together about thirty user associations, Patient Actions, with the aim of documenting these “lost opportunities”. The results of their survey, fueled by more than 2,000 patient and healthcare worker testimonials, are expected to be published later this month. “What we are trying to show is that these difficulties are not related to a particular service or hospital, but to an overall operation resulting from successive policies that have placed the hospital’s profitability first. “, Laure Dorey denounces.
A major player in the hospital protests, the Inter-hospital Collective (CIH) welcomes the fact that patients are taking over to alert public authorities. “It is essential to listen to what they have to say”, esteems Anne Gervais, physician of the Bichat hospital, in Paris, and member of the (CIH). “We caregivers are no longer listened to. We have become imperceptible Cassandres. “
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“The urgency is to get everyone around the table”
Gerard Raymond
President of France Assos Health
“The flash survey we published in early October confirms what we already knew: access to treatment has dramatically worsened in France, especially in hospitals. However, we must not fall into catastrophism or be content with pointing out this or that responsible. Sure, tragedies are unfolding, both on the side of patients and on the side of caregivers. But the question now is: what do we do? The urgency is to sit down at the table and find pragmatic solutions, not at ministerial level, but territory by territory. Our health system no longer responds to the needs of the population and must be radically reorganized. “
