Emergency doctors are mobilizing against “red tape”. To put pressure on the hospitals and the government, and summon them to improve the management of the beds, the professionals chose a radical solution: to stop looking for beds for the patients who must be hospitalized at the exit of the emergencies.
Searching for so-called “downstream” beds is a painful task for emergency physicians who are constantly in the anguish of not finding places in other units of the same hospital establishment or in another hospital. This just-in-time work translates into intense stress for professionals, but above all into overcrowding in emergency departments.
The unions of emergency doctors AMUF and Samu-Urgences de France at the initiative of this mutiny explain that from October 15, the management of the beds will be the responsibility of the hospital.
“For each patient requiring hospitalization, we will continue to contact the correspondent of the unit adapted to the needs of the patient, but when no simple solution to hospitalize him will be immediately accessible, the emergency doctors will stop calling all the services on the phone. , one after the other, looking for a bed”, explains Dr Marc Giroud, the president of Samu-Urgences de France.
A bed management service in 162 hospitals
“We are going to strictly apply the law”, adds Dr. Christophe Prudhomme, spokesperson for the AMUF, quoted by Why-doctor. A union minimum which should, paradoxically, improve the lives of patients, says this emergency doctor at the Avicenne hospital in Bobigny. “For people who come to the emergency room, […] this should go better since they will consult doctors who will no longer be under the constant pressure of finding places, and the number of patients on stretchers waiting in the corridors should decrease.
Behind this punch action, the unions are asking in particular for the creation of a cell which manages the flow of hospitalization continuously, according to allocateurs.
After the delivery of a emergency bed management report on September 30, the Minister of Health decided to set up services dedicated to bed management in 162 establishments… out of the 600 that have an emergency department.
