“We can’t open extra beds” to deal with the bronchiolitis epidemic, because “there are not enough medical staff”, is alarmed Friday, October 14 on franceinfo Professor Olivier Brissaud, member of the Collectif Inter-Hôpitaux and head of the pediatric resuscitation department at the Bordeaux University Hospital. The bronchiolitis epidemic – a respiratory disease that affects young children – is declared in Hauts-de-France, Île-de-France, New Aquitaine and in the Occitanie region. Each year, 20,000 children under two are hospitalized because of this epidemic. The Bordeaux University Hospital is forced to take staff from other hospital departments and close beds: “It’s Kafkaesque for us to have to deprogram chronic disease patients to accommodate these so-called serious patients” affected by bronchiolitis, he said.
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franceinfo: What is your situation at the Bordeaux University Hospital?
Olivier Brissaud : We are in the epidemic phase as in three other regions. We welcome small children who have breathing difficulties, but there is a real particularity this year, it is that there are not enough nursing staff to recruit. It is not a problem of financing the nursing staff. It is that he is not present. In Lyon, as in Bordeaux, they cannot open an additional structure to accommodate children who have bronchiolitis. These are called seasonal annexes. We cannot open these annexes this year because there are no staff. There are closed beds. We cannot open more beds, yet we know that every year, for years, there has been an epidemic. For many years, we have known that there will be 20,000 hospitalizations in addition to children under two years old in French hospitals.
Are you going to take on nursing staff from other departments ?
In any case, the nursing staff in the various sectors knows that it is necessary to reorganize. After that, it’s not a very good strategy. Concretely, taking people and moving them from one place to another, that is to say closing beds, deprogramming chronic patients who must be hospitalized, is not a very good strategy either. Usually, staff can be recruited for the seasonal period. It still makes it possible to relieve the hospitalization sectors. It will not be possible this year, so there will necessarily be mobilization of personnel. It’s the only strategy we have, but it’s not the best.
Does this mean deprogramming pediatric patients to accommodate children affected by the bronchiolitis epidemic?
What must be understood in pediatrics today is that patients who come to hospital outside of epidemic periods are increasingly complex patients who require specialities. These children who are said to be chronically ill, in fact, require hospitalizations. They are extremely complex. It’s Kafkaesque for us to have to deprogram patients with chronic illnesses to accommodate these so-called serious patients. However, all the same, the role of the hospital is to welcome these two types of patients. We must be an open door for all serious patients who arrive in emergency and also complex patients with chronic diseases. It is our vocation that makes us work at the public hospital.