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in collaboration with
Dr Gérald Kierzek (Medical Director)
In Quimper, a man who noticed signs of a stroke waited nearly 48 hours before being treated in the emergency room of his hospital, spending two nights in the corridor. A situation which he bears witness to today.
According to information from Telegram, a man in his forties presented to the Quimper emergency room with a suspected cerebrovascular accident (CVA) on Saturday March 23 at the end of the day. And while it is often said that “every minute counts“ in the event of a stroke, it would not have been treated until Monday afternoon, almost 48 hours later.
“Two, three pieces of bread” and a sheet for the night
Outraged by the conditions in which he was received, the man wanted to speak publicly in the daily newspaper on March 27. He thus describes an interminable wait, spent in fear and without any comfort, with the impression of going back 20 years. He would have slept in the hallway without a pillow or blanket.
“The staff managed to find sheets left and right. They found two or three pieces of bread to feed me.” he concedes.
However, it is not the healthcare personnel that he castigates in his testimony but the healthcare system in general:
“The team is very competent. She does this job by vocation. But she must be helped! It lacks means, equipment, rooms.”
Dr Kierzek, emergency doctor: “The problem is not the bobology, but the absence of beds”
This umpteenth example of a poorly treated patient in the emergency room makes Dr. Gérald Kierzek, emergency physician and medical director of Doctissimo, jump, as it seems to be becoming recurrent without actually changing the system itself.
“My emergency room colleagues do what they can with what they have. We can clearly see in this example that the problem of overcrowding in emergency rooms is not the bobology, but rather the absence of beds. Patients requiring hospitalization are waiting for beds in deplorable, uncomfortable and sometimes inhumane conditions when they are elderly people, or even at the end of their lives. This is what we call impoverishment, the third globalization of our health system!”
Dr. Kierzek: “The financial management of the hospital has been a disaster for 30 years”
The emergency physician thus points to a logic which weakens our health system, and with it, the quality of care.
“The vital emergency is still well prioritized and managed in our country but intermediate emergencies and the humanity of care are in decline with major loss of opportunities. The financial management of the hospital (and the health system) by managers obsessed with profitability, bed occupancy rates and other ratios has been a disaster for 30 years” he insists.
Other cases like that of this forty-year-old could thus become more and more frequent.