This Tuesday the nursing staff is again in the street to alert on the major difficulties of the public hospital. In Paris, demonstrators are expected in front of the Ministry of Health from 1:30 p.m.
This Tuesday, in the midst of an emergency crisis and a few days before the legislative elections, nine unions and hospital collectives are organizing a day of mobilization.
For this first day of action of Macron’s second five-year term, the CGT and its allies have planned rallies in at least fifty cities. In Paris, demonstrators are expected in front of the Ministry of Health from 1:30 p.m. Other actions are announced, often in front of hospitals, in Pontoise, Grenoble, Marseille, Nantes and Toulouse, but also in smaller localities such as Aurillac, Epernay or Cherbourg, where Emmanuel Macron came last week to announce a “mission flash” on emergency services.
Because this is where the fire is smoldering: for lack of caregivers, at least 120 services have been forced to limit their activity or are preparing for it, according to a count at the end of May from the Samu-Urgences de France association.
In Val-d’Oise, the staff of the Pontoise hospital center is mobilizing to save the public service. “Emergencies are in trouble”explains Véronique Hélie, delegate of the CGT of the hospital of Pontoise. “All establishments, whether private or public, experience operational difficulties, patients who remain on stretchers for hours is the daily life of the hospital”she continues. “Patients come to the emergency room for lack of beds, for lack of doctors, and that’s how hospitals, even university hospitals, find themselves having to temporarily or permanently close their emergencies”laments Véronique Hélie.
The public service needs more personnel and the professions must be made more attractive, explains Véronique Hélie. “The salaries of the public hospital service are not increasing. Our index point has been frozen for 12 years. If we want agents not to flee public health establishments, they will have to be increased”argues the union representative.
He is the president of the association Samu-Emergencies of France, François Braun who will have to present the conclusions of the “mission flash” to the Head of State by the end of June. A justified delay in order to “watch emergency service by emergency service and Samu by Samu, territory by territory where there are needs”explained Mr. Macron in an interview with the regional press on Friday, promising to “take emergency decisions as early as July”. But his opponents see it above all as a ploy to “postpone the decisions after the legislative ones” of June 12 and 19, when the health system is already “in a disaster”denounced the emergency doctor Christophe Prudhomme, of the CGT-Santé, Monday on RFI. “We expect a particularly difficult month of July and a horrible month of August” et “this flash mission is a bit of an insult to us”even estimated Pierre Schwob-Tellier, of the Inter-Urgences collective, during a press conference on Thursday.
Criticism also targets the choice of Mr. Braun, head of emergencies at the CHR in Metz and health referent for candidate Macron during the recent presidential campaign. The person concerned assured Franceinfo on Wednesday that he did not intend to produce “an umpteenth report” but good “write the prescription” expected by the hospital, adding to have “already tracks”. Some are in a letter sent to the Minister of Health, Brigitte Bourguignonthe day of his appointment and published on the website of Samu-Urgences de France.
Some avenues are sometimes consensual, such as the revaluation of night and weekend work, “very painful” but increased by only one euro per hour for nurses, which is “completely aberrant”he pointed out.
Other ideas are worrying, such as the obligation to call 15 to filter access to emergencies, implemented in Cherbourg or Bordeaux. A scenario “unplayable” for Patrick Pelloux, president of the Association of Emergency Physicians of France (Amuf), who predicts an explosion of calls to Samu “already overwhelmed”. With a risk of loss of chance for patients. The option, however, has defenders in the majority, like the deputy of Charente Thomas Mesnier, also an emergency doctor, who deemed it necessary in the Sunday newspaper of “get back into crisis management mode to get through the summer“, even if “recenter” ces services “on their real job, vital emergencies”. Eager to “shake taboos”the elected even pleads for “Smur Without Doctors”with only nurses in the ambulance to make up for the absence of practitioners in places, and suggests transforming into “day antennas” the emergency services that “we can no longer keep open” permanently.
Proposals unlikely to appease the “bubbling discontent” observed by the general secretary of the CGT-Santé, Mireille Stivala. To increase the pressure, Mr. Pelloux also plans to “launch a strike movement in the emergency room before the summer”.
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