Strasbourg (AFP)

Precise gestures, quick actions, stress control: the new civil hospital (NHC) in Strasbourg offers nurses from other departments express training in resuscitation so that they are no longer caught off guard by the influx of patients. severely affected Covid-19.

"We bring you Mr. Muller, 50, Covid positive, in respiratory distress", announces over the phone Professor Julie Helms, professor in medical intensive care.

At the other end of the corridor, Doctor Alexandra Monnier and three young nurses equip themselves with protective glasses, gowns, charlottes, FFP2 masks and prepare what is necessary to quickly give oxygen to Mr. Muller.

But Monsieur Muller is a plastic mannequin.

Remote controlled by a trainer, he moans, coughs, suffocates, answers yes or no.

Around him, the doctor talks to her as if she is really going to call his wife to give her some news and the three nurses are rushing to prepare the requested material by monitoring the vital signs of the fake patient.

“The purpose of these exercises is to see the mistakes that we make and the avenues for improvement,” explains Thomas Henninger, 30, an intensive care nurse since September, after four years in internal medicine.

"In intensive care, we are with patients in critical condition, we always have in the back of our mind that the slightest error could be extremely serious. You have to know how to manage your stress, react tit for tat", he adds.

- Reserve of nurses -

Bringing together the civilian hospital and four other establishments, the University Hospitals of Strasbourg (HUS), where almost 12,000 people work, are still far from the saturation experienced during the first wave in the spring.

As of Friday, twenty resuscitation beds were still available out of 124. But fifty were occupied by Covid patients, a number which has already doubled since early November.

To have a "reserve" of caregivers able to come and lend a hand in resuscitation in the event of a large influx of serious cases of Covid-19, the NHC is organizing four sessions of four half-days of training in basic procedures for 60 volunteer nurses.

"During the first wave, they were trained on the job (...), some nurses were traumatized because they were thrown into an intensive care unit, telling them + get by +", says Professor Julie Helms.

"Being thrown in from night to day ... I was afraid of doing wrong, of being deleterious for patients," recalls Arsène Rabolion, intensive care nurse in cardiology.

Her unit had transformed into "Covid resuscitation" in the spring, but she and her colleagues had only received rapid training in the emergency.

"We went there with a great fear in the stomach," she says.

At first reluctant to the idea of ​​doing resuscitation again, she was convinced by a colleague to take this training which combines practical and theoretical exercises.

History to be better armed against the second wave.

"If we don't do it, who will do it for us? We will most likely be called upon, so we say to ourselves that if we have training, we will apprehend less," she discounted.

- Give confidence -

Before the practical exercises around the mannequin, the fourteen nurses in the Friday session receive explanations and instructions on how to properly equip themselves in a department where each clumsy or spontaneous gesture can be a source of contamination for the caregiver.

This is followed by questions and answers on errors to avoid or clinical signs to spot in patients whose condition can deteriorate from one minute to the next.

"It is an express training, we should not be under any illusions, we are not in the process of making resuscitation nurses with two-day training courses", admits Professor Helms, while usually he takes long months of learning in the service.

"On the other hand, we try to give them confidence, to show them how it will happen, to give them some essential basics", she continues, while acknowledging that resuscitation is "a service that is scary".

But "knowing how to react in the context of an emergency, in an appropriate manner, without panicking, these are things that can be learned", assures Professor Helms.

© 2020 AFP