Are all patients who come to the emergency department treated the same? Six years after the death of Naomie Musenga, a young woman who died in December 2017 after being mocked by a Samu operator - who had just been indicted for "failure to assist a person in danger" - a study has revived the debate. According to this study, published in December in the European Journal of Emergency Medicine, and relayed by Midi Libre, women and black people are taken less seriously than men and white people by emergency room staff.
This study was carried out last summer among 1,563 people working in emergency departments in France, Belgium, Switzerland or Monaco. The authors sought to assess the role of gender and ethnic prejudice in the early management of acute coronary syndrome – which is characterised by very strong pain in the chest, with a feeling of tightness, according to the French health insurance.
They distributed a questionnaire to the respondents. They were asked to prioritize the care of fictitious patients of different genders and ethnicities, based on a photo and a description of a clinical case.
The authors concluded that "visualization of simulated patients with different characteristics altered the prioritization decision." In other words, for similar cases, the level of priority was not the same depending on the characteristics of the patient. In this case, men were given higher priority than women; and cases from white patients were considered higher priority than those from black patients.
"Mediterranean Syndrome"
In France, a survey conducted in 2018, a few months after the death of Naomie Musenga, had already revealed discrimination against emergency patients. Conducted by several associations, it highlighted a "Mediterranean syndrome widely disseminated in the medical profession". A theory according to which people of North African origin tend to exaggerate their pain, which makes them less taken seriously when they present to the emergency room.
A "fantasy", had at the time responded to the Parisian François Braun, then president of Samu-Urgences France. "In medical regulation, the personality of the appellant is taken into account. The interrogation varies according to whether it is voluble, withdrawn... But there is no link with ethnicity," he said.