Strasbourg (AFP)
A hospital "suffering", "degraded" working conditions and staff sometimes "close to burn out": this is the alarming report drawn up by the staff of Strasbourg University Hospital, on the eve of a national event for a "emergency plan" for the public hospital.
FO and the Association of Emergency Physicians of France (Amuf) called on Thursday to begin a strike renewed at Strasbourg University Hospitals (HUS).
"We come to the end (...) There are more and more patients and behind, we go all the time to the economy," plague Christian Prud'homme, general secretary of the union FO Health HUS.
Fifth University Hospital of France (excluding Paris and Marseille) with more than 2,500 beds and day places and 12,000 agents, the HUS have been subject for years, like many other hospitals, to a savings plan to reduce their deficit.
A fiscal diet that allowed them to reduce the accumulated deficit of 30 million euros in 2013 to 5 million euros in 2018, concedes the unionist.
But at the price, according to him, of working conditions which have deteriorated with, for the year 2019 alone, four social movements.
"We are closing beds and reducing the payroll," says Prud'homme, who releases his calculator: "in four years (...) more than 300 beds have been closed, all sectors combined" while Fifty additional nurses would be needed.
- "Hell" emergencies -
Consequences: a "lack of resources" and staff, sometimes day-to-day schedules, "just-in-time" days ... Not to mention the difficulties in recruiting and retaining health care workers who do not hesitate to run in the private sector, where wages and working conditions are much better.
Alexis Lienhardt is a young nurse, 27 years old. When he graduated from school in 2013, he joined the CHU with enthusiasm. "At the time, I thought to be in a buoyant sector.In fact, we realize that we are in a financial machine," he says, confident his "disillusionment".
Today, he would not "advise" his young colleagues to join the public hospital: in six years, Alexis, who lived for two years "hell" emergency, said he saw his profession " precarious "and lose its attractiveness.
Highly publicized, the emergency crisis is only "the visible face of the iceberg," says Professor Jean-Philippe Mazzucotelli, head of the cardiac surgery department at the CHU.
Emergency doctors "work in extremely difficult conditions (...) but we must not believe that it is better for us", continues the surgeon, spokesman of the Collective of defense of the structures hospital-universities of Alsace.
Because "if the emergencies go so bad, it is because there are not enough beds" of hospitalization downstream in the services to unclog them, explains Mr. Mazzucotelli, who says himself "solidarity" of the call of the "inter-hospital collective" to demonstrate Thursday in Paris.
- "Fed up"
"The problem of emergencies is the problem of the entire hospital," insists Mr. Mazzucotelli, for whom "all the services are suffering" since the introduction of the economy measures.
Another glaring example of the crisis in the public hospital is geriatrics, where the lack of staff is "probably more critical because of insufficient recognition of the arduousness of old age jobs," laments Professor Georges Kaltenbach, head of this service has 400 beds.
26 are currently closed and the caregivers are "exhausted by the operating conditions and insufficient staff", with, consequently, a management of patients "degraded", abounds the Dr. Patrick Karcher, which exerts within the center geriatrics .
Christian Prud'homme sounds the alarm: the staff are "at the end of the roll or in + burn out +, there is a general tiredness (...) It takes urgent additional means", he warns.
Asked by AFP, the CHU management did not wish to speak.
© 2019 AFP