Lying on his stretcher in the middle of the emergency department of the CHU, Yohan Wolff takes his trouble patiently.

The 28-year-old auto mechanic was admitted for chest pain, but doesn't know exactly what he has yet.

"I've been here since 4 a.m. I've been waiting to do a scan, it's long, time doesn't pass," he explains, in the middle of the afternoon.

“But my wife is also a caregiver, so I know the rush they have,” he adds, grateful to the hospital staff who are struggling around him.

"I have already been given exams, including an ultrasound which did not give anything", adds this young father, aware of being lucky compared to other patients, some of whom are waiting for care. for more than 24 hours.

"Young people are still fine, but when you have nonagenarians, it's complicated", underlines Professor Pascal Bilbaut, head of emergencies, pointing to the stretchers aligned next to each other a little further, and which s accumulate right up to the service entrance.

“We have reached around 220 visits per day on our two emergency reception sites. This is a figure up 6% compared to 2021”, which was already a record year, he underlines.

Closed unit

"We feel both the epidemic crises, the holidays, and the social movement (strike, editor's note) of liberal medicine. We hold on, we ensure the real emergencies, but that leads to waiting times for the others ".

The hospital, which was already warning about its working conditions and the lack of resources long before the covid pandemic, finds itself powerless to deal with this new crisis.

The emergencies of the Strasbourg University Hospital on December 29, 2022 © SEBASTIEN BOZON / AFP

"Here, for example, we have no patients, that's not normal, but it's a unit that we closed for lack of emergency doctors, who went on sick leave or who left the hospital altogether", exposes Pascal Bilbaut in front of the completely empty outpatient trauma waiting room.

"It's something I had never seen, until this year", worries the practitioner, in office for 31 years.

"Bed shortages have consequences for patients, not life-threatening, but consequences nonetheless."

The Samu-Urgences de France union has recorded at least 23 “unexpected” deaths since the beginning of December at the national level, a consequence of the difficulties of care.

"1,800 calls per day"

This "permanent tension" also weighs on the daily lives of caregivers.

“We feel physical and mental fatigue. For a few weeks it has been very complicated, we have been on a thread”, concedes under his mask Albin Ancel, 29, an emergency nurse for 8 years.

He testifies to the "high turnover" of the service, "regularly understaffed", and which cannot retain its young recruits.

"We sometimes do blood tests in the hallways, examinations between the screens ... We would like to do better than that, but we only have two arms, two legs, we do the maximum with the means we have ".

Emergency room congestion can also be seen in the hospital car park, where ambulances pile up waiting hours for their patients to be taken care of, and even in the Samu call control room, where doctors are overwhelmed.

“We have a considerable increase in activity, more than 1,800 calls picked up per day”, summarizes Doctor Anne Weiss, head of Samu du Bas-Rhin.

“We are getting closer to the figures observed during the covid epidemic, but we no longer have the same reinforcements”.

With headphones on and eyes riveted on three computer screens lined with red, green and blue bands, each medical regulation assistant tries to deal with the most urgent matters and identify vital emergencies.

"We are holding on because we are not allowed to crack, but we are getting closer and closer to the precipice," she concludes.

© 2022 AFP