Paris (AFP)

Practitioner in a hospital in the Paris region, on the front line to treat the surge of coronavirus patients, an anesthesiologist-resuscitator delivers daily for AFP, on condition of anonymity, the summary of his day in the middle of a health crisis.

- Thursday April 16 -

"Things continue to calm down little by little. The services are still very busy but there are always fewer and fewer entries in intensive care. The situation is again very strange for two days.

After being overwhelmed with patients for several weeks and having built a new mode of hospital operation day after day, we are currently in a phase where there is less Covid activity and where non-Covid activity has not still really resumed.

It is strange to suddenly find yourself sufficiently numerous in terms of medical and paramedical staff after having been understaffed for a long time.

It’s probably good for everyone. One has the impression of breathing a little.

For the past week, videoconference sessions have been organized with certain patients and their families. That too, I think it feels good for everyone. If some of us may not be fully convinced of this, loved ones and families need us and we need them.

Today, a patient recently separated from respiratory assistance was able to see his wife for the first time in two weeks.

In the next room, people living abroad were able to say goodbye to their loved one a few minutes before his death.

In one room as in the other, we are convinced that this has been beneficial for some. In one room as in the other, we have tried to do our work a little better than in recent weeks, in a more human way.

Relatives and patients have felt it, I hope. For caregivers, it was also a breath of fresh air to be able to achieve this.

Finally, a thought following government announcements. I, for my part, like many others, are very uncomfortable with the idea of ​​exceptional compensation for having done our job.

Certainly under more stressful, more precipitous and more uncertain conditions than usual. We had already felt this when at the time of the attacks of November 13, we had received a small bonus for having come in addition to the hospital that night. I had donated it to an association.

We are several doctors who find this a bit offbeat. We see here the idea of ​​saying that the State supports its hospital staff.

The idea is probably good on the merits. But we are mainly waiting for what has been announced as the second part of the new hospital plan, in the long term.

We are waiting for hospital beds to stop closing, or even to reopen, for the paramedical professions to be largely revalued in terms of remuneration, for the public hospital to regain a peaceful functioning and to become again a place where quality medicine can be practiced, where patients can be received and treated in decent conditions ... "

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