Closure of emergency services: “the situation is catastrophic” – Yahoo News

In recent weeks, the regional press has continued to relay announcements of emergency service closures throughout France. The Inter Urgence Collective is worried.

HEALTH – It is no longer time to sound the alarm, the situation is already critical: emergency services in public hospitals are closing in cascade throughout France. Whether for a few hours each day or for several weeks, these services have to close their doors for lack of healthcare staff.

For several weeks, the regional press has continued to relay announcements of emergency service closures throughout France:

“The emergency department of the hospital Givors temporarily closed overnight until November 30 ”
“The emergencies of the hospital of Laval close for four nights this first week of November ”
“The unscheduled care service of the Maymard polyclinic in Bastia will be closed from Monday 1 to Tuesday 9 November 2021 ”
“Until December 31, emergencies at the Gier Hospital will only be open from 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. ”
or even: “The Sarthe et Loir Health Center (PSSL) closes its emergencies on November 8, from 8:30 p.m. to 8:30 a.m. ”.

Nowadays, 20% of beds are closed to the public and the situation is just as of concern for pediatric emergencies. A situation which forces some patients to be transferred to other hospitals, even if it means putting their lives in danger.

“The situation is beyond catastrophic”, deplores the HuffPost Fabien Paris, nurse and member of the Inter Urgences Collective – who describes himself as “the first large-scale professional association for paramedical exercises in emergencies”.

“And things will not work out, this phenomenon of emergency closures will continue and grow,” he warns. Concern reigns, for today and especially for tomorrow, when welcoming emergency patients will no longer be possible.

Cascading closures and “degraded services”

Because this epidemic of closures is a rifle symptom of the crisis that the public hospital has been undergoing “since long before the Covid”, underlines Fabien Paris. He denounces an “extremely degraded situation”, a direct consequence of “thirty years of politics and destructive reforms of the public hospital ”. “15 years ago, France was the country with the best health system. Today we are not even in the top ten places in this ranking ”, he announces.

Olivier Véran keeps telling us ‘hold on’, but why would we hold on? Fabien Paris, nurse member of the Inter Urgences Collective

The nurse mentions several reasons for this collapse: the exhaustion of caregivers and the savings that must be made by the public hospital which “lives on credit”. On this last point, Fabien Paris denounces inadequate pricing of care. “Procedures and care have a cost, but the more procedures we do, the lower the price. It does not value the cost of certain techniques. Real funding would be needed to help the public hospital to pay off debts”He calls. This would make it possible to put more resources into the recruitment of nursing staff.

But this member of the Inter Urgences Collective is no longer under any illusions, he even seems to have lost hope. “Olivier Véran keeps telling us ‘hold on’, but why would we hold on? What is the point since nothing will get better? ”He wonders, tired of war. Even if he claims to believe deeply in his mission, the nurse can no longer see the end of the tunnel in the face of this “inextricable situation”, stressing that even if an effort has been made on the income of certain professions, “A salary does not make working conditions”.

A “sudden return to ‘the abnormal’”

And this state of mind is fairly widely shared it seems, as evidenced by the departures of caregivers in waves, especially since the Covid pandemic. In almost all of the announcements of emergency closures, the reason given is the lack of personnel to run the services.

“The caregivers are exhausted, physically, psychologically. When we see that nothing is done to improve our working conditions, it’s hopeless ”, denounces Fred, emergency nurse at Rennes University Hospital and member of the Inter Urgences Collective, questioned by The HuffPost.

According to our two interlocutors, the second wave of Covid is the straw that broke the camel’s back. Of course, the tensions in the services in the face of the influx of patients have played on the fatigue of caregivers, but it is their working conditions, now degraded compared to the first wave of March 2020, that have ended up disgusting them. .

“During the first wave of Covid, paradoxically, caregivers were able to see their working conditions improve. The health situation was such, unprecedented, that when the staff said they needed such equipment or such staff, they generally had it. It was care that dictated the terrain. But during the second wave, we returned to the way it was before Covid. After such a period, this sudden return to the ‘abnormal’ was very violent for the caregivers and this prompted many of them to leave ”, explains Fabien Paris.

Fred confides for his part coming to work anxious, for fear of seeing “the head” of his teammates, “tired”, “at the end of the line”, and of understanding “that they are not holding up”. “Before I could say that I wanted to end my career in the public hospital, today it is no longer thinkable,” he regrets.

“Patients are in danger”

And for what follows, how does the Inter Urgence Collective see the situation evolving? Not in a very optimistic way. “Today we realize that we are in the wall, even a year after Ségur nothing is about to get better. So for the future, we are very worried, says Fabien Paris. He thus predicts a “desertion from the hospital”, then an “insufficient national network”, the closure of emergencies and Smur, to arrive at an inevitable loss of chance of access to healthcare for the population. “In five or ten years, life expectancy in France will drop. And soon, when we take accommodation, one of the main criteria will be the presence of a hospital nearby, ”he says.

For Fred, “the drop in life expectancy we already have! We have one poor care in hospitals because it is not possible to manage all the patients with the means we have ”, he denounces.

So certainly, the peripheral hospitals are the most affected, “but the fact of closing these services will only clog the hospitals of the big cities, with the dangers of the transfers of patients. Waiting 30 more minutes to take care of someone is to take the risk of seeing their condition deteriorate quickly and arriving too late ”, warns Fred who insists:“ the patients are in danger ”.

See also on The HuffPost: Covid in Guadeloupe: CHUs and intensive care services saturated

This article originally appeared on The HuffPost and has been updated.

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In recent weeks, the regional press has continued to relay announcements of emergency service closures throughout France. The Inter Urgence Collective is worried.

Cascading closures and “degraded services”

A “sudden return to ‘the abnormal’”

“Patients are in danger”

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