A situation “worse than it has ever been”: nearly 20% of beds closed in hospitals for lack of … – BFMTV

A flash survey conducted at the initiative of the Scientific Council at the beginning of October delivers a worrying picture of the situation at the French hospital, as revealed by Liberation. Nearly 20% of beds are closed in CHUs and CHRs due to a staff shortage.

The result of the flash survey conducted at the beginning of October by the Scientific Council, the National Consultative Ethics Committee, accompanied by the directors of CHU in order to probe the hospital situation in the country is undoubtedly not likely to surprise professionals. But the panorama of the scale of the crisis is startling. According to this study, the conclusion of which was mentioned in an opinion of the Scientific Council As of October 5, around 20% of beds are currently closed in hospitals for lack of staff.

And the phenomenon is general. It affects CHUs and CHRs in all regions, and all stakeholders. Regarding these staff shortages, the opinion of the Scientific Council however points to five professions experiencing particular tension: IDE (translating nurses), staff working in blocks, anesthesiologists, radiology manipulators, masseurs- physiotherapists. With the consequence, growing difficulties for the hospital and the patients, wandering from one service to another.

At the origin of this slump, we deplore three factors: departures, absenteeism of caregivers, and the lack of attractiveness of hospital work.

“The situation is worse than it has ever been”

Frédéric Valletoux, president of the Board of Directors of the Hospital Federation of France and mayor of Fontainebleau, reacted on BFMTV this Wednesday morning.

“It’s worse in the fall of 2021 than it has ever been,” he explained. “We see these figures everywhere which alert us to this problem of attractiveness, to retain caregivers, this uncertainty linked to the epidemic while our health system is in deep crisis”.

In detail, after two years of the epidemic, 19% of beds were closed in the hospital in September 2021. There were 9% in September 2019.

But according to Frédéric Valletoux, it would be wrong to limit the reading of this inventory to the only fallout from the health crisis. For him, the problem also lies upstream.

“The subject is a loss of meaning, a fatigue that can be understood but behind this fatigue, a demotivation in the face of a hospital which goes from crisis to crisis.” “We must move from the blockage that we have witnessed for 15 years to a real New Deal for the hospital,” he pleaded.

3,566 beds are missing at the AP-HP

This Wednesday, Release publishes a vast survey around these figures to go further. The newspaper recalls in particular that these data were part of an already very degraded context. A study of the Department of Research, Studies, Evaluation and Statistics (the DREES) has recorded the deletions of 27,000 beds since 2013. There now remain 387,000 places, a stock from which we must therefore subtract 19% of beds, or 73,530 beds.

Admittedly, these closures concern the whole of the territory but a dive into the internal documents of the Public Assistance – Hospitals of Paris, carried out again by Release, allows a more acute vision. Of the 20,000 beds available to the Ile-de-France institution, 3,566 are now missing. This is nearly 2,000 more units than in 2019, when 1,694 was inaccessible.

Staff exhaustion

Explaining the scarcity of hospital staff therefore involves taking into account the departures of caregivers and the lack of attractiveness of the area. And in addition to these trajectories that are difficult to quantify, there is absenteeism. On the other hand, this has been precisely measured: we now deplore 11% of absenteeism nationally against 8 to 9% in 2019.

“It must be said, many of our caregivers are exhausted by the mental load and the pace of work of the crisis.” The report is signed by the Minister of Health Olivier Véran in Release this Wednesday, which ensures, however, that the contingent of resignations from the hospital remained “moderate”.

However, he admits: “Added to this is the fact that among nursing students in training between 2018 and 2021, just over a thousand resigned before the end of their studies. An investigation will be launched on the matter, I want us to understand the reasons. “

Olivier Véran’s solutions

So how can we curb this discomfort, overcome it and clear a new path to these beds that we cannot open today for lack of arms? Because the Minister of Health says he is convinced that it is possible to “turn the tide”. After emphasizing that his Health Segur had injected 10 billion euros in hospital salaries, he lists his proposals:

“We are in a policy of increasing our staff, whether it concerns doctors with the end of the numerus clausus and more than 17,000 students who are now in their second year of medicine, or nurses and nursing assistants with the creation of 6,000 additional places in schools this start of the 2021 school year. “

And it’s not just about boosting recruitment. The general discouragement should also be put to an end. “I asked Pôle Emploi, in sectors under stress, to identify caregivers who had registered for professional retraining,” says Olivier Véran on this subject. The idea would then be to organize an individualized meeting in order to retain them.

For the president of the Board of Directors of the Hospital Federation of France, it is in any case necessary that the public debate seize the phenomenon and treat it in depth. “It must be a subject of the presidential election!”, Urged Frédéric Valletoux on BFMTV.