She says she spent 24 hours in the emergency room on the same stretcher and without eating anything. Madeleine Riffaud, the 98-year-old resistance fighter and former war journalist, sent an open letter to the Assistance Publique – Hôpitaux de Paris (AP-HP). The letter was published on Monday, September 19, on the internet. She denounces her care on September 4 at the Lariboisière hospital in Paris and intends to alert to the lack of resources in hospitals.
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Madeleine Riffaud says she waited 12 hours to get half a glass of warm water. When she arrives in the emergency room after complications linked to the Covid, she is accompanied by several relatives, including Jean-David Morvan, comic book scriptwriter, in particular that on her journey as a resistant. “We arrived at the emergency room and we were banned from entering – which I can understand. But we were told that we would be called back later and then nothing.”tells the author to franceinfo.
Jean-David Morvan discovers 24 hours later that Madeleine Riffaud has just been transferred to a private clinic: “When we found her at the clinic, we realized that it had not gone well and that’s what she says in her open letter.” The resistant, who is blind, recounts the cold, the hunger, the cries of the other patients turned back at the emergency room door and the overwhelmed nurses running everywhere. Caregivers distribute “that works”of the “I arrive”but “no one ever came”describes Madeleine Riffaud in her letter.
However, she does not blame the nursing staff. After covering the Vietnam War for seven years, the former journalist gets hired as a nurse’s aide in a hospital in the capital. She will draw from this experience a book on the health system entitled Linens of the nightpublished in 1974. “The good thing about Madeleine is that, obviously, she never takes it out on the nurses or anyone. For her, it’s the system that needs to be reviewed”says Jean-David Morvan.
In a press release, the Assistance Publique-Hôpitaux de Paris gives its version, retracing in particular its course: support at 12:10 p.m., samples at 12:43 p.m., scanner at 5:25 p.m. “The patient presented herself alone by ambulance to the emergency room of the Lariboisière hospital on September 4, 2022 at 12:10 p.m. She was greeted by the reception and orientation nurse, registered in the care circuit of the service then examined by the senior doctor at 12.25 p.m., who prescribed a certain number of examinations. Biological samples were taken at 12:43 p.m. and a scanner was performed at 5:25 p.m. In the evening, the patient was transferred to the short-term hospitalization sector of the emergency room. On the morning of September 5, after the doctor’s clinical examination, the patient was transferred to another health facility suited to her medical situation.“, writes the AP-HP in a press release published on Tuesday, September 20.
Stating that “technical gestures, care and monitoring were thus provided to the patient on a regular basis throughout her treatment“, the AP-HP says, finally, “very sincerely regrets the way the patient experienced her care and the fact that she felt that she had been insufficiently supported. We will endeavor to quickly and completely clarify the conditions under which she was informed and supported throughout her presence at the Lariboisière AP-HP hospital.“