After Lariboisière, caregivers from the Saint-Antoine emergency room are also on sick leave to protest against their working conditions.
The emergency crisis continues, despite the announcements of the Minister of Health. On sick leave, between 13 and 15 caregivers did not take up their post on Saturday evening at the Parisian hospital Saint-Antoine.
According to the Inter-Urgences collective, “15 paramedics out of 19, exhausted by their working conditions, were unable to take up their post” and “three paramedics from the day shift had to stay to continue to take care of patients”, thus working “18 hours in a row” while waiting for “the relief of the next day’s team”. “Management says it has the right to force them to work 18 hours,” denounces the organization, accusing it of “unconsciousness” and endangering its staff and patients.
Unpublished
The AP-HP, on which the Saint Antoine hospital depends, speaks of its side of volunteering. “Part of the afternoon emergency reception team was asked, on a voluntary basis, to mobilize to ensure continuity of care. ‘substitute and interim team’, specifies the institution.
Usually, caregivers protest against their working conditions by going on strike, but continue to work with a simple armband bearing the mention of their demand. But faced with a reaction from the public authorities deemed non-existent, emergency personnel hardened their movement by going on sick leave, as was the case in particular last week in Lariboisière or Lons-le-Saunier.
“What happened in the emergency room of Lariboisière is quite unprecedented, in general the caregivers on strike come to treat with an armband to ensure continuity of care, there they went on sick leave, it is to mislead what is a sick leave”, estimated last Thursday the Minister of Health Agnès Buzyn. “I think it’s not good, it leads to an overload of work for the others. We saw it in Lons-le-Saunier, it was the ambulance attendants, it was the firefighters, it was the liberal doctors who taken care of all the patients. By doing this we increase the fatigue of others”, she criticized, recognizing all the same “a very big fatigue of the personnel in the emergency room”.
Staff increase
Caregivers are demanding an end to bed closures, an increase in remuneration of 300 euros net and an increase in staff. Throughout the country, about fifty emergency services are also affected by a strike movement with the same demands.
A mission to overhaul the emergency services was entrusted to the deputy Thomas Mesnier and to the president of the National Council for Hospital Emergency, Pr. Pierre Carli. They have until the fall of 2019 to submit their report to the Ministry of Health. According to a press release from the latter, the goal is threefold: first, to take stock of the situation, then to measure what the effects of the reforms currently being carried out and finally, to determine what are the other measures to be taken to improve further.
At the same time, the Minister indicated that she was going to mobilize the Regional Health Agencies (ARS) to carry out architectural renovation work in the emergency services in order to improve the reception of patients. Paramedical personnel are now entitled to a risk premium under certain conditions. Agnès Buzyn said she wanted to standardize it in order to take into account the difficult working conditions and the possible assaults on caregivers. The last measure concerns the cooperation bonus, which will be granted to health professionals who use the delegation of powers to reduce waiting times in the emergency room.
