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Hospital bed closures: "We are not on the precipice, we are in"

2021-10-27T17:32:10.728Z


FIGAROVOX / INTERVIEW - According to a survey by the Scientific Council, one in five beds would be closed today in CHUs and CHRs in France. The lack of attractiveness and the psychological difficulties involved in hospital work scare away the doctors, argues the emergency physician Patrick Pelloux.


Dr Patrick Pelloux is an emergency physician and President of the Association des Médecins Urgentistes de France.

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FIGAROVOX.

- Nearly one in 5 available beds is currently closed in public hospitals in France, according to a survey conducted by Jean-François Delfraissy, president of the Scientific Council and of the National Consultative Ethics Committee (CCNE) and relayed by Liberation.

How did we get here ?

Patrick PELLOUX.

-

First, allow me to be surprised that the Scientific Council is carrying out a social survey.

It is very useful but quite unexpected.

For years the trade union confederations have been alerting to the situation.

Perhaps thanks to the Scientific Council, we will finally be heard.

On the other hand, the figures are much less surprising.

The lack of hospital beds is dire.

This failure of the hospital sector jumped out in the eyes of the French when, during the Covid crisis, they realized that we only had 5,000 intensive care beds in France.

As the population ages, we cannot afford so little space.

The hospital is still subject to a pyramid system, very hierarchical with clans, castes, and an exacerbated corporatism.

Patrick Pelloux

This is explained by a lack of attractiveness and therefore a desertion of doctors. The operation of the hospital responds to laws - such as that of 1958 relating to university hospital centers - completely obsolete. Periodically, reports of the hospital are requested from academics, but the academics are there to guard the temple. The statute of university medical hospitals is the most endowed with the statutes of academics. Obviously, they want to preserve their privileges.

We also have archaic management.

Where all the systems of large companies have evolved to meet the needs of workers, the hospital is still subject to a pyramid system, very hierarchical with clans, castes, and an exacerbated corporatism.

Add to that institutional violence and we end up with a large number of colleagues in

burnout

.

Today we have suicides among doctors.

This is something that we did not see a few years ago.

To read also Christophe Prudhomme: "It is the grave-diggers of the hospital who are sounding the alarm today"

In other words, it is not only a lack of financial attractiveness that plagues the hospital, but also psychological difficulties.

Are these the same mechanisms that explain absenteeism, which is gaining ground according to the Conference of Presidents of the CHU Establishment Medical Commission?

Yes quite.

I'll take an example: the staff who work at the SAMU in Paris cannot find accommodation in Paris.

They are therefore forced to all live very far away.

To be there at 7 a.m. and to be dressed, they leave their homes at 4 a.m.

This social violence necessarily causes absenteeism.

Very quickly the staff wears out and goes on sick leave.

Every day it is more and more difficult to find beds for sleeping sick people, to take care of them according to the quality criteria that people demand.

Patrick Pelloux

We no longer know how to keep the staff at the hospital.

There is a scarcity, with departments in France where there is no longer a cardiologist, no longer a psychiatrist.

We then loot foreign countries to take their doctors away.

I find that unfair.

I don't know how we're going to spend the winter.

We are on the edge of the precipice,

”worries the newspaper Dr. Patrick Goldstein.

As an emergency physician in Paris, do you share his alarmism?

Every day it is more and more complicated to find beds for sleeping sick people, to take care of them according to the quality criteria that people demand.

The lines in the emergency room are growing and it is extremely difficult for patients to be taken care of, especially if you have chronic illnesses.

We are not on the precipice.

We are already in it.

But the sick need us, so we keep on working.

Source: lefigaro

All news articles on 2021-10-27

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