Drama at the Purpan hospital center in Toulouse.
A man hospitalized in the psychiatric emergency consultation department of the CHU committed suicide this Wednesday, February 14, revealed our colleagues from
La Dépêche
and France 3. This patient was discovered around 8:30 a.m., and could not be revived.
According to our local colleagues, he had remained ten days before his death on a stretcher, in a three square meter office, due to a lack of available beds.
“It was stored there,”
observed a South union representative, to
La Dépêche
.
“Due to a lack of places, patients remain in the emergency room.
It is not the fault of the caregivers but of the ARS (Regional Health Agency) which does not take its responsibilities.
Normally, they would only stay there for a few hours, but more often it lasts two or three days or even more.”
Unions sound the alarm
Unions have continued to sound the alarm in recent years.
In January, a strike was called after a patient set fire to his bed in a psychiatric unit.
“Psychiatric emergencies are 200% saturated with repercussions on somatic emergencies
,” alerted the union delegate.
“Working in these conditions amounts to mistreatment for patients, which the nursing staff cannot tolerate,”
also added Sébastien Gaussy, union representative of the CGT.
The Purpan University Hospital
“showed its compassion to the family and those close to the deceased”
on Wednesday evening, and provided its
“support to the professionals affected by this painful event”
.
He confirms hospitalization
“for several days”
and specifies that
a “transfer to a downstream structure was in progress”
.
Psychological support for caregivers has been
“implemented”
.
Rape and sexual assault
This suicide occurs in a particularly difficult context.
At the start of the week, a thirty-year-old accused of raping a young woman in the emergency room of the University Hospital was indicted and placed in pre-trial detention.
The events occurred on the night of Saturday February 10 to Sunday February 11: the victim, a young 18-year-old woman, who had presented herself to the emergency room, had gone out to smoke a cigarette when the suspect, a homeless man aged 30 years old, approached her.
“They started talking.
He asked her where the toilets were.
She showed him and she explains that afterwards, he raped her
,” said the Toulouse prosecutor.
The CHU indicated that another patient had been the victim of a sexual assault the same evening, in the same emergency department, but stressed that
“these two reports are not linked to each other”
and that
“the circumstances are different”
.