REPORTAGE
Firefighters, orderlies, rescuers and health students are now allowed to do virological PCR tests. A decree published on Saturday in the Official Journal has indeed extended the list of professions authorized to perform these famous tests with the swab, the large cotton swab in the nose to detect cases of coronavirus. This measure should make it possible to reduce waiting times, which are sometimes too long, in order to speed up screening within the population. But some nurses and firefighters, interviewed by Europe 1, criticize this decree.
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"We go to the fire department to make fires, not to do medical work"
The Roubaix barracks carry out around 11,000 interventions each year, including fires but also personal services. Firefighters could therefore soon perform PCR tests. But this measure does not please Marc Lehoucq, CGT representative of the rescue center. "We go back to the firefighters to make fires, to help people, not to do medicine. Otherwise, we would change profession and we would move towards hospitals, doctors or nurses", criticizes the trade unionist.
"The firefighters were not considered as nursing staff. Today, they are asked to do a little more," he said.
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"It's not just a cotton ball", indignant a nurse
Julie, a liberal nurse, will have to be trained in the practice of PCR tests, just like the firefighters. But she does not understand how it is possible to authorize other trades to carry out these tests. "It is abused. We are ready to help, but we are not asked, we are not given the means", indignant Julie.
"It's not just a cotton swab, you have to go deep enough. And I do not think that it is with a training of one hour that a student or a firefighter will know how to achieve all that", worries she does. The order of nurses of Hauts-de-France has also approved the increase in tests while warning: that this be done in the rules of the art.