Suicide in Pompidou: Marisol Touraine seizes IGAS inspectors

At the Pompidou hospital (Paris), light will have to be shed on the circumstances surrounding the suicide of Professor Meignen. After having “read the conflict mission report at the Georges Pompidou European Hospital (HEGP) ”, launched following the death of the cardiologist, the Minister of Health announced in a press release that she would seize the IGAS (General Inspectorate of Social Affairs), as she had promised .

Dysfunctions pointed out

The mission, set up by Martin Hirsch, director general of the AP-HP, and Gérard Friedlander, dean of the Paris-Descartes faculty of medicine, has indeed published its final conclusions. In her report, posted online this Thursday on the AP-HP website, she underlines that “the suffering [du professeur Mégnien] was revealed by several alerts that were not taken into account appropriately ”.

The response “was limited to the search for a solution to the conflict. No interview was offered to Prof. Mégnien, the university and hospital occupational medicine were not requested and no contact was subsequently established with the university with a view to calling on an approved doctor or a medical committee ”, explains the commission.

The report also points to dysfunctions in the organization of the succession of Prof. Simon, at the head of his cardiology department. This service “operated for years in a vacuum” by a rotating chiefdom, specify the rapporteurs. The management was entrusted to a doctor other than Jean-Louis Megnien, according to terms “which may have given the impression that the agreement was a disguised way of excluding him”.

Moral harassment

The cardiologist’s colleagues say he was the victim of moral harassment from his peers and the hierarchy. On December 17, he took his own life defeating himself from the seventh floor of the hospital. His wife lodged a complaint with the Paris prosecutor’s office, which opened a preliminary investigation for “moral harassment”.

In its press release, the Ministry of Health specifies that the IGAS will have to submit its report within two months. The mission will be responsible for “analyzing, in the light of the interesting recommendations of this report, the conclusions to be drawn from the causes of this tragedy and formulating recommendations to improve, within this establishment and in all the hospitals, the detection and prevention of psychosocial risks, including university hospital staff ”.

>> The Health Guest of Why Doctor, 08/01/2016
Prof. Philippe Halimi, colleague and friend of Prof. Megnien