It has almost become like a sad refrain, that of the announcement of the closure of the emergency room of the hospital in Oloron-Sainte-Marie every weekend. Again, the service will not be able to remain open neither this Saturday 13, nor this Sunday 14 August. In question, a chronic lack of staff: there are not enough emergency doctors to maintain the service.
Three closing weekends announced for the month of August
This is the third consecutive weekend of closure for this month of August, after already a long series of disturbances since the beginning of the summer. And it’s not going to stop there. In addition to being closed from Saturday to Sunday this first weekend of August, the service will be even more degraded the weekend after, and risks remaining closed from Friday evening to Monday morning. On the last weekend of the month, the emergency room should only open on Sunday.
In case of accident or need, you must therefore call 15 instead of going to the emergency room. The Oloron-Sainte-Marie hospital has developed a more advanced intervention system to compensate for the lack of service, with SMUR teams who can travel to take care of patients on site or evacuate them to another hospital. .
Better in September, but little respite expected
The summer season will therefore have been totally chaotic for the hospital, and exhausting for the teams, recognizes the management. No schedule is fixedand the needs for emergency doctors are met on a daily basis, depending on the solutions found.
The start of the school year in September, on the other hand, signals the return of emergency doctors. But despite the best on the horizon, it’s not the end of the worries that are looming. “We don’t have clear, sharp and precise visibility” explains the director of the hospital, Frédéric Lecenne. “We are going to be forced to do as we are doing at the moment, that is to say, day by day, trying to find doctors for such and such a date, and this until the end of the year or until ‘for potential measures to come in and help us.”
“For the moment, the emergencies of Oloron are in an extremely difficult situation“ continues the director, “and even if we see an upturn in September because we have requests from freelancers and replacements, that does not sustain the operation of emergencies in the medium term”.