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We had the fiction, with “Hippocrates”. We now have a documentary, “Premières urgences”, which follows step by step five young medical interns in a public hospital in Seine-Saint-Denis, future doctors guided by ideals but not naive.
This film by Eric Guéret, in theaters on Wednesday, sticks as closely as possible to the gestures and words of young people immersed in the deep end of the public hospital, sometimes – but not always – chaotic.
An environment observed this time through the prism of the documentary, after the successful film (2014) and series (2018) by Thomas Lilti, a former doctor.
The Delafontaine hospital, in Saint-Denis, is a “peripheral establishment which resembles many others, with a population pool facing the medical desert”, but where emergencies are “not a drifting service”, explains the director Eric Guéret, author of numerous documentaries for television.
Over the course of the consultations, Evan, Hélène, Lucie, Mélissa and Amin learn the trade while juggling the difficulties of the hospital: lack of beds, staff, equipment.
The defective computers, the broken toilets, the box whose door does not close and the repaired printer erected as a symbol: “We do without the front and back, we repair it with tape, but we never replace it. is the somewhat funny symbol of the situation of the hospital”, ironically Eric Guéret.
“It’s crazy to see how we get used to these difficult conditions,” comments Amin, after watching the finished documentary.
In a scene in the cafeteria, Evan sighs next to Hélène: “We need beds, that’s all”. A lack of beds which forced Mélissa to make dozens of calls to hospitals in Île-de-France to find a place for her patient. “It happens to spend almost two hours on the phone,” adds one of the emergency doctors.
However, emergencies do not stop running and the staff does not give up. “We see all the difficulties, but the strength of the service is everything else”, underlines to AFP Mathias Wargon, head of the emergency department of Delafontaine.
“It is the motivation and the enormous commitment of all the staff that keeps the hospital going”, abounds Eric Guéret, at the end of his six-month immersion in the establishment.
This commitment testifies “to the greatness and values of the public hospital”, points out Mathias Wargon. Who however notes a lot of departures among the staff and notes the high number of doctors with foreign diplomas in his service because “the others do not accept to come to work under these conditions”.