“The recovery of hospitals is a social and political emergency”

2024-09-05 09:00:10

“Decongest emergency departments before the end of 2024.” Emmanuel Macron’s promise is attractive, but only unrealistic as long as it does not include the necessary institutional measures to get hospitals out of the rut in which they have been sinking for years.

This summer, the list of emergency rooms closed at night, every day or on a frequent basis has also become a long litany, and the waiting times for patients, who must be urgently hospitalized, are often count in days, even weeks. Unthinkable only a few years ago, the attention of the critical deficit still does not seem to shock some political leaders, as evidenced by the self-satisfaction, in mid-August, of the Minister of Health who put left, Frédéric Valletoux, explaining that with a “Fifty hospitals under pressure”The situation is better than 2023…

How can we apply to such figures, perhaps far from the truth, moreover, which keeps a lot of suffering for the patients and their loved ones, many complications and sadness, and more and more loss of the chances of treatment which is it the result, unfortunately, of normally avoiding death? Not to mention the working conditions of all hospital staff, in front of facing the injustices that they try to reduce through unfailing commitment, but from whom we cannot ask for fruitless efforts and finding solutions to the problems they are in no way responsible.

Read also This article is reserved for our subscribers Emergency services are also under pressure throughout France: part closures, explosions in waiting times, etc.

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Summer is a difficult time because of the holidays, but the epidemics of autumn and winter, every year, the same litter in emergency rooms and pediatrics. Psychiatry or geriatric work is exhausted at all times. The crisis is deep and there is no cyclical path.

An important question of the worker

The abundance of emergencies is the result of inefficiencies of the entire hospital system, or even of the health system as a whole. Three levels of the care system are affected by failures: top, by early and correct errors in care that increase the use of emergency services; within the emergency services, by the shortage of workers; Downstairs, due to the lack of hospital beds.

It is therefore necessary and urgent to build and deliver a special recovery plan for the public hospital, with the needs of the patients as its main goals, and the safety of its employees as a guide for action. All the structural, organizational or technical reforms, however they may be, will not be enough to save the hospitals from the crisis if we do not consider the caregivers in their true value, that is to say important resources and important matter to any health establishment. Care is more than everyone and, even more than any other public service, the hospital can only play its role with a sufficient number of staff, known for their skills and commitment, and equipped with the necessary means to implement their knowledge.