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in collaboration with
Dr Gérald Kierzek (Medical Director of Doctissimo)
Medical validation:
September 14, 2022
The 81-year-old patient died in the emergency room of Strasbourg University Hospitals (HUS) after waiting about twenty hours on his stretcher.
The drama took place on September 1, but the event was only revealed on Tuesday, September 13, by a letter written by the FO union intended for the Minister of Health François Braun.
The octogenarian was found dead on his stretcher
It was only after a very long wait – more than 20 hours in total – that the 81-year-old patient died. If the causes of his death are still unclear, we do know that he was discovered dead during a change of team.
For Christian Prudhomme, secretary general of FO at the HUS, it is a tragedy that results from a dysfunction.
In his letter, intended for the Minister of Health, he thus denounces “the recurrence of the degradation of care and the deleterious functioning of emergencies” emphasizing that “this new death comes 36 hours after the filing of a right of alert made by our FO representatives denouncing yet another situation of emergency blocking and overloadof the Strasbourg establishment.
For their part, the University Hospitals of Strasbourg (HUS), which declared the death to the Regional Health Agency on the national portal for serious adverse events, specified that “the entire hospital community reiterates its sincere condolences to the family of the deceased.”.
“Any death within our institution remains a difficult situation for the entire hospital community.“, insisted the management.
For Dr. Kierzek, “It is inadmissible, in general, to wait twenty hours on a stretcher in the emergency room, regardless of one’s state of health. This dramatic story, which unfortunately will only repeat itself, translates two things. First, the problems in the emergency room are not due to “bobology”; we must therefore stop dissuading people from coming to the emergency room. The real cause of emergency room overcrowding is the lack of downstream beds. The longer we wait on a stretcher, the greater the loss of chance with increasing mortality. Secondly, if the condition of this patient was already very serious or perhaps even at the end of life, it is unworthy not to have a room in a hospital in France in 2022″.
Last March, a patient had already died in the HUS emergency room
Earlier this year, a patient suffering from gastrointestinal bleeding died in the HUS emergency room. He had waited a dozen hours before being taken care of.
The nursing staff, angry, had alerted the authorities to the lack of hospital beds and the overcrowding of the emergency room.