In France, the boss of the AP-HP, Martin Hirsch announced his resignation to hospital staff this Friday morning. Martin Hirsch has held this position since 2013 where he manages more than 100,000 professionals and 38 hospitals. This comes in the midst of a hospital crisis.
In his letter to the staff of the AP-HP (Assistance Publique – Hôpitaux de Paris), Martin Hirsch regrets not having been able to modify the hospital system in depth. And therefore to keep his promise. At the start of the pandemic Covid-19in March 2020, he had made a wish, that of a different post-Covid hospital, with more caregivers and better patient care.
Today, he is sure of it. ” The conditions are not met to keep this commitment he says. Congested hospitals, growing medical deserts, “ loss of meaning » of the profession for the staff, emergency services on the verge of syncope… After more than two years of pandemic which have wrung out caregivers, hospitals are on the verge of an abyss and are suffering the brunt of a cyclical and systemic crisis which is making it tremble on its foundations. “ I am convinced that many of the ills from which we suffer call for changes of the same magnitude as those that were made in 1958, when the university hospital was redesigned to restore its strength, nobility and attractiveness. “, he wrote in his letter.
Since his appointment in 2013, Martin Hirsch will have faced with several challenges. In 2019, for example, strikes broke out to denounce the lack of resources and the endangerment of patients. And in 2020, the Covid-19 pandemic changed the situation. He had to manage the overload of hospitals and the fatigue of caregivers.
“ He’s a real killer”
Martin Hirsch is a personality with an atypical background. Rather on the left, present in the associative world as president of Emmaus or even minister of a right-wing government, his resignation illustrates the extent of the crisis of the public hospital in France.
Asked about the departure of the boss of the AP-HP, the new Minister of Health Brigitte Bourguignon on the move in Vienne, soberly “ praised the work he has provided during these years for the public service “.
On the side of the unions, the criticisms are sharp. “ He’s a real killer. It has accelerated the processes already underway in the public hospital », Comments Christophe Prud’homme, emergency doctor at Samu 93 and responsible for the CGT federation of Health and Social Action. “ He leaves the ship before it sinks after commanding it for nine years “, Tackles Marion Malphettes, doctor in the immuno-pathology department – threatened with closure – of the Saint-Louis hospital in Paris.