It only took one weekend to turn everything upside down. For several weeks, the emergencies of the hospital center of Saint-Brieuc (Côtes-d’Armor) saw their narrow waiting room overflowing. On December 9 and 10, attendance reached 245 patients in one day. The staff sounded the alarm. “We knew we would be in the red”, sighs Doctor Christian Brice, emergency doctor.
In order to recover beds quickly, the Breton representative of the‘Association of Emergency Physicians of France (AMUF) has asked its management to deprogram short day surgery operations. These do not require accommodation and are largely carried out by private practitioners in hospitals. The disillusioned forties laments: “Out of 39 operations, only two were postponed… Result: during this time we had 25 sick patients on stretchers in the corridors, without any privacy. »
A situation far from being unique in France. And Brittany is no exception. Since the beginning of December, the alarmist announcements are linked. In Lorient (Morbihan) and Quimperlé (Finistère), the Bretagne Sud hospital group asked the population to go to the emergency room “with extreme parsimony”, when the Paimpol hospital (Côtes-d’Armor) warned of the saturation of the service and advised to give priority to other choices – general practitioner, medical center – before coming. On the side of Landerneau (Finistère), it has been decided to close every night from December 23 to January 2, “due to the absence of an emergency doctor”, says management in a press release. Identical scenario in Redon (Ille-et-Vilaine), since mid-October, for the same reasons of tight manpower. The Breton regional health agency did not wish to comment on all these difficulties.
lack of everything
Lack of beds, lack of arms, lack of everything. This is the portrait painted by professionals from the Saint-Brieuc emergency service, which has banned family visits and restricted its access to those who call 15 before they come. “We are in a malicious system and, by force, we become malicious without wanting it, we too », regrets a young doctor from the break room. In the corridors, the stretchers pile up, regardless of the pathologies. The waiting time to get a hospital bed right now? More than twenty-four hours, under the neon lights and in the constant hubbub. Not to mention the tension that now reigns between liberal practitioners and their public counterparts. According to Maxence Forestier, caregiver and CFDT representative, “the hospital applies a budgetary policy and, to remain attractive, it favors liberal activity which brings in more, whereas we should play collectively in this kind of moment”.
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