Non-assistance to a person in danger, late care, poor diagnosis, lack of empathy … cases of neglect on the part of the emergency services follow one another.
Since the revelations made on the death of Noami Musenga, who died at the end of December after contacting the Samu of Strasbourg who had made fun of her on the phone, testimonies relating to acts of neglect have been pouring in. Non-assistance to anyone in danger, late treatment, poor diagnosis, lack of empathy … are the French emergency services on the verge of death?
Firefighter diagnoses heatstroke instead of stroke
On May 16 in Lille, the administrative court ordered the departmental fire and rescue service (SDIS) of the North and the Roubaix hospital to pay 300,000 euros to Christophe for having misdiagnosed him during a stroke. (Stroke). The man, now 44 years old, is quadriplegic because the duty firefighter he called in for backup in 2012 when he was feeling ill (dizziness, vomiting, problems with balance and speech), advised him to go home. Thinking of a heat stroke, the firefighter did not bother to move.
But on the way, the man collapses. About two hours later, a passerby discovers him unconscious in the street and takes him to the Victor-Provo hospital in Roubaix. On the spot, the doctors waited two hours before deciding to send him to the CHR of Lille “taking into account the seriousness of his state of health”. Arrived on site at 3:30 in the morning, it is too late: Christophe already presents a “flaccid quadriplegia in the four limbs” following his stroke. A neurological examination diagnoses that he suffers from “locked in syndrom” or syndrome of confinement. If his intellectual faculties are intact, he is today quadriplegic and dependent. He is aware, hears and sees but can no longer speak.
Support too late, a pregnant woman dies
Thursday, May 17, the prosecutor’s office of Saint-Etienne opened an investigation for “non-assistance to person in danger and manslaughter”, after the death of a 38-year-old woman, 6 months pregnant, not supported by the Samu nine days ago.
Victim of discomfort on February 28, her husband called for help. The operator advises him to call SOS Médecin, which he does. But when the doctor intervenes two hours later, the mother is in cardiac distress. He then performs a cardiac massage and in turn calls the Samu. The young woman is placed in an artificial coma, but neither her baby nor she survives. The deputy public prosecutor of Saint-Etienne, André Merle, “referred the judicial police to a preliminary investigation”.
The Samu refuses to come, a 3-year-old girl dies
At the beginning of February, in the middle of the night, a 3-year-old girl in great respiratory and neurological distress was brought by her mother to the Aix-les-Bains hospital. Contaminated by the flu, little Lissana could not be resuscitated. Her family said they called Samu when they saw the little girl’s condition deteriorate. But the emergency services reportedly refused to come, forcing the mother to take her daughter to the hospital herself.
However, the girl was 3 years old and over 40 ° C with fever since Sunday, January 28, when the flu diagnosis was made by a doctor. The persistence of the fever for 2 days and the gradual appearance of an increasing respiratory gene, very unusual in winter flu, should have alerted the doctors of the Samu, in particular with the history of bronchiolitis that the girl had. All the signs of severity of an unusual flu were present to trigger an intervention of the Samu and immediate hospitalization in pediatric intensive care. This was not the case, suggesting a notable malfunction of the emergency chain.
Amputated after a late assumption of responsibility of the Samu
These tragedies are reminiscent of the one experienced by Thomas Veyret (21), amputated after late taking charge of the Samu in 2017. “It was the same odious speech and above all no empathy for the person, no consideration of his condition. “, recalls the young man after hearing the recording of the call made by Naomi Musenga at Samu.
At the time, Thomas performed figures on a trampoline at his workplace in Grenoble and fell badly. He then calls the Samu and explains to the operator that his leg is “square”, therefore fractured. The operator asks him to straighten it himself: “Wait, I’m going slowly because there …”, explains the young man. And his interlocutor replied: “Go slowly but now I have been waiting for a while”. This bad gesture and its late management prevent oxygenation of his leg for several hours.
As pointed out BFMTV, Thomas had to wait 7 hours before having the CT angiography, an examination making it possible to visualize the arteries and blood vessels responsible for supplying the body with oxygen. “The situation is common between the case which concerns my client and this young deceased woman, Naomi, namely that it is this lack of listening which causes the medical error”, declared Me Edouard Bourgin, the lawyer of the Veyret family.
Saturation of emergency services
Endless waits, shortage of personnel and equipment, lack of information … the French emergency services are saturated. In Tours, two 90-year-old women died in the emergency room waiting room two weeks apart. Both were at the end of their life as a result of a serious illness and spent between 4 and 6 hours lying on a stretcher in a crowded room, taking their last breath among other patients, without the assistance of a healthcare professional. .
“It is an exceptional phenomenon”, commented to France Bleu Touraine Professor Pierre-François Dequin, medical manager of the Emergency Department of the CHRU Trousseau. “The medical teams are bruised, injured, shocked by these unworthy deaths”. The first death occurred on the night of April 11 to 12, the second on May 3. Do these two tragedies bear witness to the implosion of French hospitals? From a saturation of emergency services? According to figures provided by the Ministry of Health on Friday March 16, 97 hospitals out of 650 had to activate the “hospital under pressure” plan in order to obtain the addition of additional beds in the various departments.
Towards a “certification” of Samu?
Faced with this succession of tragedies, the Minister of Health Agnès Buzyn asked for a “certification” of the Samu. “Today there are a lot of cases going back: cases in emergencies, cases related to Samu and cases related to the care of firefighters, also subject to the same pressure and the same risk”, a- she declared during a visit to the Samu Val-de-Marne regulation center in Créteil.
The minister considered that these cases show “that there is room for improvement in their practices, in particular a harmonization of procedures, better training of people who answer the telephone” and “quality assurance”. And to continue: “Very few Samu have quality assurance, but it is a deeply risky activity (…) so it must be subject to some form of accreditation, certification” and “it will have to be very quickly set up on the territory, from this summer “. Case to follow.
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