2023-05-07 08:00:05
“They did what they could, the problem is that we have to find a place…” Paul Ziajko, 84, is not complaining after four days in the emergency department of the University Hospital Center (CHU) in Rennes, Tuesday May 2. He is fortunate to be installed in one of the small rooms of the very short-term hospitalization unit. Not in a hallway. The former soldier repeats it: he is “very satisfied with the hospital service” who takes care of him, after the hemorrhagic shock that put him “on the level of the daisies” Few days ago.
The place is however not made to linger there. It is intended for patients requiring examinations, for a maximum of twenty-four hours. But, as in the other emergency departments of the CHU, the traffic jam is general. The emergency crisis is hitting the Rennes establishment hard, as it is increasingly alone on its territory to receive patients. During this first long weekend in May, a closure was added to a now usual list: the emergencies of Fougères (Ille-et-Vilaine) had to keep the door closed at night, in addition to those of Redon and Vitré, for lack of emergency physicians.
“You are going to Saint-Laurent, the private hospital”, cheerfully announces the nurse, Nadège Clouet, to her patient. She has just learned, from the CHU’s bed management unit, that a comprehensive medicine service will be able to accommodate her. Good news for the octogenarian with blue eyes. And not just for him. “We know that there are many people waiting for a place here”continues the 44-year-old caregiver, showing the rest of the emergency department in turmoil.
A few steps away, the so-called transfer sector is full, with seven patients lined up at an angle in a large rectangular room. Intended for “transitions” to another service, it too sees its name as more wishful thinking than reality, being used de facto to store patients. “It doesn’t bother me that there are people, the problem is privacy, notes Nadège Abdourahman, nursing assistant. When you have to change someone, make a toilet… it’s not possible. »
“We are so busy”
A few meters away, the ball of stretchers is incessant in the corridors, with patients in every corner, regularly moved to succeed in passing one more. “It is a normality to which we have become accustomed, but which is not normal”, recognizes the emergency doctor Vincent Levrel, 32 years old. It is almost 1 p.m. and one hundred and two patients are in the ward at the same time. A figure well above the capacity of the place.
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