Pediatric intensive care units in Ile-de-France are full. So much so that, on the night of Sunday September 25 to Monday September 26, it was necessary to transfer a child to Orleans, the second regional transfer since the start of the school year. This signal is of great concern to health professionals in the five intensive care units dedicated to children in the Ile-de-France region, where there are a total of 70 places for a pool of 10 million inhabitants. “In September, usually, we never have a transfer to the provincewarns Jean Bergounioux, head of pediatric resuscitation at Raymond-Poincaré hospital, in Garches (Hauts-de-Seine). The transfer is the final proof of our inability to accommodate the population. »
Should we see an early arrival of bronchiolitis, which, each year, saturates the pediatric services with a peak in December? No, this year, the epidemic seems to be following a fairly classic pattern, with a very gradual rise in cases since the beginning of September. The Ile-de-France regional health agency (ARS) reports a marked increase in emergency room visits for children, already reaching the highest levels of the previous four years, “with ENT infections as the main reason”but the overall hospitalization rate remains below 20%.
“Heartbreaker”
We must rather look for the cause on the side of the lack of paramedical personnel. In the pediatric intensive care unit in Garches, 21 nursing positions are vacant, i.e. 50% of the workforce. Accordingly, the service is complete. On the weekend of September 24-25, he had to refuse admission to eleven children. “It’s heartbreaking, I have four beds all ready and they are closed for lack of staff”, regrets Doctor Jean Bergounioux. To ensure the quality and safety of care, it is considered that one nurse is needed for two intensive care beds and one for four in continuous care.
Same observation in the 19e district of Paris, at the Robert-Debré hospital, in the service of Stéphane Dauger. “I had never had any difficulties until then to reopen beds at the start of the school year, which is when surgery resumes. There, we spend our time navigating between eighteen and sixteen beds instead of twenty”, alerts the pediatrician. Result, for fifteen days, the hospital “turned down tons of sick people”while the service is already overloaded, with, for example, nineteen patients treated this weekend. “We are going to enter into the psychological exhaustion of nurseswarns the doctor. If we start, from the start of the bronchiolitis epidemic, to work beyond the ratios, that will demobilize the teams. »
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