“This spring, the crisis of our health system will reach its climax through the uncontrolled failure of the functioning of the emergency services”. The first words of the letter from the Samu-urgences union in Franceaddressed to the new Minister of Health Brigitte Bourguignon on Sunday, May 22, set the tone for the state of disrepair and panic in which the emergency services find themselves.
A census published on Friday, May 20, by this same union reports 120 services in “difficulty”, 66 of which are forced to close at least partially. From small hospitals to the largest, none escapes the current tension. The consequence of a deep malaise.
Lack of staff and beds, government promises not kept, physical fatigue and moral exhaustion resulting from the Covid-19 epidemic, the medical workforce is permanently affected, and recruitments are far from compensating for the resignations, more and more numerous. The Samu-emergencies union notes that the nursing staff is “both harassed by the overload of work, desperate by the feeling of doing the job badly and distraught by the rise in the reactionary violence of which they are victims”.
Institutions are trying to get out of it as they can
Worried about the situation on the ground, the Association of Small Towns of France (APVF) in turn challenged the Minister of Health on Wednesday May 25, citing a number of hospital establishments having had to completely close their emergency services. , as in Guingamp, Chinon or Sarlat. The APVF goes further, denouncing “a purely accounting and financial management of our health system with disregard for patients and the quality of care”.
Each establishment therefore tries to get out of it as best it can. The CHUs of Amiens and Châteauroux are transferring their patients to other establishments, those of Rennes de Roubaix and Tourcoing are postponing non-urgent operations and all are trying to strengthen home hospitalization.
To reverse the trend, the Collectif inter-urgences is calling for an improvement in working conditions, the imminent implementation of a recruitment policy and a salary increase. The Samu-urgences union believes that the government must anticipate the difficulties by organizing coordination of services at the territorial level, in particular with the private sector, and ensure the activity of mobile emergency and resuscitation services, currently closed at Grenoble, Metz or Creil.
And so that this subject of society is at the heart of political concerns, nine organizations representing caregivers and other hospital staff called for a mobilization on Tuesday June 7, a few days before the first round of the legislative elections.