After a summer already marked by protest, the emergency departments of the Grenoble University Hospital are starting from Tuesday, November 1, a unlimited strike, that is, until they get satisfaction. This time, their claim is based on single point : “stopping the stagnation of patients in the emergency department beyond 12 hours“, according to a press release from the CGT.
Because the situation in Grenoble is dramatic, testifies Marion, a nurse from the emergency room of the CHU: “We are the only emergencies in France, to have at least forty patients in the morning, when we only have 55 places. And there [ce lundi après-midi]we end up with 81 patients in the emergency room at the same time, with 37 of them there for more than 12 hours__. Knowing that we have someone who is there for 5 days and 8 hours, a gentleman waiting for a place in hospital“. The record according to her: a patient who once waited 14 days in the emergency room for a place to become available in psychiatry at the Saint-Egrève hospital.
Many reasons for this congestion
Because it is indeed one of the reasons which explain this overcrowding of emergencies: the lack of places in other services. “First, there are patients who will come because they don’t have no attending physician“, explains Léa (the first name has been changed), doctor in the emergency room of Grenoble. “And then there are some who will stay in the emergency room for a very long time because there is no downstream place__, no bed in the hospital for them, their only possibility is to stagnate in the emergency room“.
Another point which, according to her, prevents the decongestion of emergencies, the huge lack of staff carer: “We are limited in our care, because we should be 52 full-time equivalent doctors, and instead we are only 28. Inevitably, that has an impact on the care of patients. We find ourselves doing several things at the same time__, and even doing what we can, it’s sometimes a little less well done“.
A minimum service that has become the norm
For Léa, emergency patients are simply more and more in dangerhence this strike movement: “What we do is not even so much for us. We are a young team, when we chose emergencies, it was already complicated conditions. But deep down, we all do this for our patients, for those people we see on a daily basis andwe would like to treat better“.
It should be noted that this movement will not lead to a break in care, the striking caregivers being assigned, that is to say, forced to provide the minimum service. “Knowing that we are already at the start in permanent minimum service, it simply means that all those who were scheduled on the duty roster will still work“, explain the striking caregivers.