“We are in an extremely critical situation, we do not see how we can get out of it”alerted Wednesday July 13 on franceinfo Julie Contenti, deputy head of the Emergency department, head of the hospital-university department of Emergency Medicine at the Nice University Hospital.
The Nice hospital emergency room has been forced to set up filtering since Monday to deal with the number of patients and the lack of beds. The Nice University Hospital is facing a wave of absenteeism of nursing staff, linked to work stoppages or contamination with Covid-19, which leads to the closure of beds.
franceinfo: What prompted you to set up this filtering?
Julie Contenti: In fact, we find ourselves faced with a situation that is not so exceptional as that. We have a daily number of entries that is predictable for the summer period. We do about 250 to 300 patient visits per day. The problem is that we are faced with a closure of beds which, on the other hand, is exceptional. Every morning, we have now since Monday between 45 and 50 patients who are waiting on our stretchers for a hospital bed that unfortunately we do not have.
What is the device in place?
We have set up the device since Monday after an extremely tense situation in our emergency reception service. We do not refuse entry to the emergency reception, but we redirect patients as much as possible to the private or public emergency structures of the department, in order to let us be able to manage the patients who are physically present in our emergency department. and which have been extremely numerous since Monday.
Do you call on the population to join 15 before going to the emergency room?
We totally agree. Patients need to be able to call us in the first place so that we can direct them as best we can, or even give them medical advice. From time to time, this is enough and it allows them to wait for the consultation with their attending physician. Of course, patients who cannot call 15 can always go to the emergency reception and we will receive them. We didn’t turn away any patients on Monday or yesterday.
Is it the absenteeism of the nursing staff that is in question?
It’s exactly that. We had to close just over 30 post-emergency medicine beds, which are very important beds for us, due to major nursing absenteeism which means that we cannot keep this capacity of beds open today. You have caregivers who are exhausted. They spent 2 and a half years of Covid in extremely difficult conditions. They can’t take it anymore. They don’t see the end of the tunnel. When you come to work every day, with 50 patients still present at 7 a.m., you really wonder why you are still doing this job. So, if we don’t change their working conditions quickly, we will still have work stoppages. This is what we see every day, every morning. When we come to work, we have one or two additional stops which are either due to professional exhaustion or due to certain caregivers who are contaminated with Covid-19.
Are you appealing to the government?
We will have to find solutions extremely quickly. The quickest solution will be to promote the work of our paramedical staff. I’m talking about nurses, I’m talking about medical regulation assistants. Samu needs help. We need people who can pick up the phone. If we don’t take extremely quick measures, there for tomorrow or this week, we won’t be able to spend this summer in good conditions. We are in an extremely critical situation where even we caregivers do not see how we can get out of this.