“These recommendations are distressing and put the population in danger”, said Thursday, June 30 on franceinfo Doctor Christophe Prudhomme, emergency physician at Samu 93, spokesperson for the Association of Emergency Physicians of France (AMUF) and national CGT Health delegate, while the draft report of the “flash mission “on unscheduled care was handed over to Matignon on Thursday. Dr. François Braun shared 41 proposals for overcoming a “high risk” summer in emergency departments. According to him, Dr. Braun, author of the proposals, is “a political relay of Mr. Macron”. Christophe Prudhomme calls in particular for “stop the bleeding of resignations in the hospital”. And he pleads for “an urgent debate in the National Assembly on the future of our health system.”
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franceinfo: Are the recommendations of the Braun mission going in the right direction?
Dr. Christophe Prudhomme: These recommendations are distressing and put the population in danger. Having an emergency service 30 minutes from home, open 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, is not an option. It is an absolute necessity to ensure the safety of the population. There are already deaths and there will be deaths.
“The population is endangered by this report.”
spokesperson for the Association of Emergency Physicians of Franceat franceinfo
Mr Braun, he is no longer a doctor. It is a political relay of Mr. Macron. We saved time. We passed the legislative elections. He laid out a report with proposals for bed managers. This is nothing new. It is an invention of Madame Bachelot when she was Minister of Health and it has proven to be completely ineffective for 10 years. We don’t need bed managers. We need open beds. We are at an impasse. And this also applies to maternity wards. There are maternities that will close this summer. The woman who thought she was giving birth 10 km from her home, we risk telling her, the maternity ward is closed, we have to go 50 km away. And she risks giving birth on the road. This is the reality. It’s catastrophic.
What should be done to respond to the emergency this summer?
We must stop the hemorrhage of resignations in the hospital. Because the personnel having no hope of improving their working conditions and their remuneration leave the hospital en masse. We were already understaffed. But there, we are witnessing what is called the great resignation, all personnel confused. The system needs to be overhauled. In Germany and Austria, all doctors take part in what is called the permanence of care. They take guards. If we had asked all the doctors to make an effort – whether they were generalists, specialists in town, whether they worked in a clinic or in the hospital – to do night shifts, weekends and holidays, we could have found a solution. There, the solution is: there is no doctor, we close. And worst of all. Imagine that in the Samu vehicles, you will no longer have a doctor, you will have a nurse. Any delay in the care of a patient is what is modestly called a loss of opportunity for lack of means. These are preventable deaths.
How to avoid these resignations of caregivers?
We have to stop being in denial about the reality of the situation. We continue to be offered hospital restructurings with bed closures when there is a shortage of beds. The Ségur de la santé was supposed to solve everything. But despite the increase of 183 euros, which is a bonus, French nurses still earn less in purchasing power parity than their Mexican colleagues. That’s the reality. Nothing has been done for three years. When in 2019 there was a crisis in the emergency room, we asked for a training plan and massive hiring at the hospital.
“Many services are closed because they lack medical staff. We must overhaul the organization of the system. There, we are not changing anything in the system.”
Christophe Prudhomme, spokesperson for the Association of Emergency Physicians of Franceat franceinfo
We continue not to regulate the installation of doctors, we continue to pay them on a fee-for-service basis, we continue to have hospitals where there are specialty services that no longer correspond to patients. At some point, you will have to stop tinkering. The measures proposed by the Braun report are tinkering. The consequences are that at the start of the school year we will still have resignations. And next winter will be worse than this summer. It is a political question. I demand an urgent debate in the National Assembly on the future of our health system. Is the health system a public service? Or do we continue to tinker with the public, the private? If we want to move towards an American-style system, let Mr. Macron tell us. But the American system is massive inequalities with consequences for the population that are catastrophic.