Eighteen months of health crisis have left the hospital on the brink of collapse.
In an interview with
Liberation
, the Minister of Solidarity and Health underlines the difficulties encountered by staff today.
Exhausted by long months of mobilization without downtime - the waves of the epidemic being followed by a period of intensive catching up of operations deprogrammed to relieve caregivers - a "
number
" of services are today "
forced to close temporarily, or to reduce the wing, for lack of caregivers,
”admits Olivier Véran.
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Quoted by our colleagues, a survey conducted by the President of the Scientific Council, Jean-François Delfraissy, concludes that approximately one in five beds would be closed today in the CHU and CHR in France.
A situation due to the lack of caregivers from which the establishments suffer.
“
Absenteeism is increasing [...].
There is an increase of nearly a third of vacant positions among paramedics compared to the fall of 2019. [...] Resignations increase more significantly between 2020 and 2021 than between 2019 and 2020
”, explains the Minister.
The health crisis has dealt a terrible blow to hospitals, leaving staff at their wit's end, and the health care supply is weakened.
And, adds the Minister, these difficulties are likely to be long-term, recruitments being "
difficult
": many nursing students have preferred to resign, thereby reducing the pool of candidates to strengthen the teams.
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If he defends the effectiveness of Ségur in responding to the long-standing salary concerns of staff, Olivier Véran recognizes that the problem of recruitment and working conditions is deeper: “
I have no doctors hidden in the closet, nor nurses waiting in a room for a button to be pressed to deploy them in hospitals,
”he warns. He adds that he wants to reverse the trend by increasing the number of nursing and doctor students, a decision that will take time.
To meet immediate needs, the Minister indicates that he asked Pôle emploi, "
in sectors under stress, to identify caregivers who had registered for a professional retraining
": they will be received for an interview, "
by trying to understand why they are leaving and offer them other alternatives, other ways of doing their jobs,
”he says.
"
We are done with the dogma of closing beds,
" adds Olivier Véran, while the latest data shows that France has closed 5,758 full hospital beds in 2020.
Concerns raised from the field
The weakening of the hospital by the health crisis was recently underlined by the French Hospital Federation. During a press briefing last week, the organization spoke of a "
complicated
" human situation and establishments "
on the ridge line
". Hospital officials reported real concerns and strong "
tensions
", facing professionals "
disillusioned, tired
" and faced with a "
loss of meaning
" overall.
If some were worried about a wave of resignations and suspensions related to the vaccination obligation now fully effective for caregivers, this measure had much more limited effects: on Tuesday, the ministry indicated that 5,300 suspensions had been raised from the sector health, and 2,600 from the medico-social sector, out of the 53% of establishments that responded to a survey.
Or, by extrapolating, about 15,000 suspended personnel in total.
The data for private caregivers are not yet known, however, making the costing incomplete.