The lack of personnel, combined with the closure of beds and night emergencies in other establishments in the area, has caused a congestion in the service, which particularly affects psychiatry.
The situation is untenable at the CHU Grenoble Alpes. On April 12, a 91-year-old man died in the corridors of the emergency department of the Isérois hospital center after waiting three days for a place in geriatrics. When he arrived at the establishment, his vital prognosis was not engaged, the doctors only evoking a state of confusion linked to his age.
This tragic disappearance is the third since December 2022 in the CHU. A 47-year-old woman died late last year in an emergency room. Shortly after, a second patient had lost his life within the walls of the establishment. All these patients died “unexpectedly”, that is to say without presenting a vital emergency at the entrance.
“For this person (the nonagenarian, editor’s note), when he came to the emergency room, there was no vital risk to his health. In any case, stagnation in the emergency room for a person who has no health problem can largely create it”, explains Sarah, a nurse from the CHU, to BFMTV.
Lack of staff
According to the unions, this situation is due to a serious lack of staff in the establishment, which has caused the gradual closure of 200 beds. “We would need at least 120 nurses and around forty nursing assistants to reopen beds”, explains to BFMTV Sara Fernandez, trauma nurse and CGT general secretary of the CHU Grenoble Alpes.
“If the situation is complicated in all services”, it is particularly so in the emergency room: the service, rather calibrated for “55 people at the same time”, shows averages of “80 patients, with sometimes peaks at 100 or 110 people,” she adds.
Of the four emergency services in the territory, two have been closed at night for a year and a half, after going through a “degraded” operation, which concentrated the care in Grenoble.
The service has “on average 142 passages per 24 hours” and “70 to 90 patients are present at the same time within the service, including around 30 patients awaiting hospitalization”, with 50% of the emergency room positions “vacant since more than a year and a half”, according to the management of the hospital.
Psychiatric services particularly affected
As a result of overcrowding in the CHU’s emergency room, the situation is under great tension on the side of psychiatric emergencies. “The number of closed psychiatric beds in the rest of the territory is particularly high” and among the patients currently awaiting emergency hospitalization, “40 to 50% concern the psychiatric sector”, further points out the management of the CHU.
According to Dr. Marc Blancher, head of the emergency department of the CHU, the three missing patients had precisely in common to suffer from psychiatric and geronto-psychic disorders.
“What is dysfunctional is the organization of the emergency department. Psychiatric patients and elderly patients with social problems, no one wants to take care of them, no one knows how to take care of them. They stay in the emergency room , and sometimes die in the emergency room”, he still advances, on our antenna.
“If the problems are not resolved by the end of the month, the service will fall”, he still assures, he who fears “a desertion” of the doctors, “extremely tired”.
Especially since the entry into force, at the beginning of April, of the Rist law, which caps the remuneration of temporary doctors in hospitals, has complicated things: with the withdrawal of temporary workers, “we are not even able to reach minimum public service,” he said.
“It won’t be the last”
On April 10, to protest against their working conditions, the emergency doctors brought to the hospital entrance hall, with their agreement, nine patients awaiting hospitalization in the emergency department. The management of the hospital “firmly” condemned this action while recognizing the “serious difficulties of the emergency sector”, in an internal email that AFP was able to consult.
Before the death of the 91-year-old man, the unions had made a report in early April for “endangering the lives of others”, closed without further action by the Grenoble prosecutor’s office.
“The report denounces inaction by the public authorities which does not justify the opening of a criminal investigation and leads me to classify it without action to date for the absence of a criminal offense”, justified the prosecutor Éric Vaillant.
During his speech last Monday, Emmanuel Macron spoke of the hospital crisis, ensuring that he wanted to “relieve all our emergency services” by the end of 2024. A promise deemed “impossible” by the medical profession.
In Grenoble, there are hardly any illusions about the sequence of events. “It is unfortunately not the first and given the situation, it will not be the last”, concludes an emergency doctor.
