“The future of the Collegiate is rather bleak” announces Olivier Dahuron, local CGT manager. The geriatric hospital, located rue du Fer-à-Moulin in the 5th arrondissement of Paris, closes its doors from this Monday, May 30. A temporary closure manages the Public Assistance of Paris Hospitals. Results : the 80 beds will be transferred mainly to the Broca hospital, located a few steps away. Some patients will go to that of Vaugirard.
To justify the closure of the establishment, the management argues that there are not enough staff to take care of the patients. The chronic shortage of caregivers had already led the management of La Collégiale to close a long-term care unit (USLD) with 14 beds last year, then another with 40 beds at the end of February. A version denied by Olivier Dahuron: “currently, at night at the Collegiate, there are two nurses for 80 patients and six orderlies. In Broca, there is a nurse and three caregivers for 70 patients“. For the union official “everything suggests that the hospital will not reopen. The management assures that it is a temporary stop but does not give any date of reopening”, before continuing: “In parallel with this closure, it has decided to cut 15 nursing assistant positions, so the management is putting in place difficulties so that in the future we cannot reopen.“.
The concern of families
The families of the patients sent letters to oppose these transfers but nothing has changed. Coming to visit her mother, hospitalized in the establishment for more than a year after a cerebrovascular accident (CVA), Valérie is worried by this transfer to another hospital: “it’s a shame to move someone who is bedridden. Some patients have been there for 20 or 30 years, it will be very difficult for them, they leave something a little family, a universe they know well to go to another much more traditional site“. The Collegiate is above all a small structure, “at Human scale” hastens to add Evelyne, who is coming out of her mother’s room. For her “Broca, it’s not quite the same atmosphere, the number of beds is multiplied by three compared to here, it’s going to be more complicated to access doctors, nursing staff I suppose“.