“They want to silence me,” denounces the head of Laval’s emergency department after her ouster

Sanctioned for being too critical? Monday, December 4, Caroline Brémaud learned that she was dismissed from her duties. The head of the emergency department at Laval hospital, in Mayenne, is one of the rare doctors who denounces, openly, the working conditions at the public hospital and talks about the crisis he is going through. This summer, on franceinfo, she criticized the government’s instructions asking the French to call 15 in the event of a health problem.

The Pays-de-la-Loire Regional Health Agency and the management of the Laval hospital cite internal organizational issues to justify his ouster. But several hospital collectives and unions denounce an unofficial sanction against this doctor.

“Clearly, they want to silence me”

“In reality, I will harm the attractiveness of the territorysays Caroline Brémaud. In short, they want to silence me.” So several organizations decided to support it: the Inter-Hôpitaux and Santé en Danger collectives, and the Samu Urgences de France, AMUF, SNPHARE and Action practitioner Hôpital unions, of which Jean-François Cibien is president. Her hospital colleagues are awaiting an explanation from the health authorities on what precisely the head of the Laval emergency department is accused of.

In a statement they say “to oppose firmly against any attempt at intimidation or any sanction against hospital practitioners”. The text evokes the “Reserve duty” to which practitioners are subject but confronts it with the “right of expression” who becomes “a duty when the health system collapses”. Collectives and unions also announce possible legal consequences: “We will study with our councils the means to fight against these methods which remind us of the dark hours of a country muzzled and brought to heel.”