Philippe Babe is the head of pediatric emergencies at Nice hospital. A service where, every day, ten beds are closed, for lack of staff. “JI turned into ‘human resources’. I spend my time trying to recruit doctors to fill the departures“, blows the health professional, while the government has just announced this Sunday, October 23 a “action plan“, accompanied by a white plan to respond to the saturation of pediatric services.
“We find ourselves with a situation that we did not know five years ago. Our mission, we can no longer assume it completely“, laments Phillip Babe. It does not have enough doctors or paramedical staff to take care of a number of patients which has doubled in ten years. And he expects the worst, if the situation persists. “I fear that we will have a few weekends and in particular during the Christmas school holidays when we will be forced to operate in degraded mode and limit direct access to emergencies. The healthcare system is no longer adapted to the needs of the population.”
“We get hospitalized children out a little quickly. It’s resourcefulness, but dangerous resourcefulness”
Emmanuel Cixous, pediatrician at the Seclin hospital centerat franceinfo
In the meantime, the service is adapting and finds itself forced to cancel certain appointments, to transfer patients elsewhere or to have them sleep on stretchers in the emergency room, for lack of available beds. Nice is not an exceptional case, the situation is similar to the Seclin hospital center, near Lille. “It’s very stressful, we see children who are borderline, we are full all the time. When we manage to have a free place, we are happy“, describes one of the pediatricians, Emmanuel Cixous.
The two doctors are asking for strong action from the government. Increase wages and rethink the healthcare system. The problem will not be solved with an envelope and “white planes“, according to Jean-Louis Chabernaud, vice-president of the national union of pediatricians in hospital establishments, and pediatrician in Paris: “If you want to give money, so much the better, but what is needed is an emergency creation of beds for a period until almost the end of December. And we must increase the staff, quite simply!“
And the situation is no better among liberal psychiatrists, who are also overwhelmed. The sector has called on parents to only come to the hospital in case of urgent need.