Confined to be preserved from Covid-19, how are residents of nursing homes? In Haute-Garonne, physiotherapists warn: immobilized, without care for their mobility, how will we find these elderly people?
Have the Ehpad become impregnable citadels where, to avoid the Covid-19 epidemic, containment would be as deadly as the virus? This is the fear expressed by liberal physiotherapists, some of whom can no longer practice in these establishments for dependent elderly people. The French federation of physiotherapist rehabilitating masseurs (FFMKR) has just sent a letter to the Minister of Health, Olivier Véran, to request a “very limited opening” of nursing homes in order to ensure access to current care.
“We have talked a lot about the risk of mortality in Ehpad linked to Covid-19 but we are ignoring the mortality that will occur in the coming months for these residents due to the lack of care. Those who are already walking hardly find themselves in a wheelchair, those already in bed will develop pressure sores which will then become infected with septicemia, we must be able to offer a better quality of life! “protested Damien Olivon, president of the FFMKR of Haute-Garonne, secretary general of the section on old age and autonomy at the national level of the FFMKR.
The physiotherapist has received several messages from colleagues for whom the doors of the nursing homes have closed, “just like the hairdressers”, he laments, “as if we were a care of comfort”.
“Unfair, inhuman”
This is the case for one of them who wished to testify anonymously, for fear of losing his post at the end of confinement. “The coordinating nurse and the director of the EHPAD in which I have worked for more than 20 years have not listened to my request. They only let their employees in, as if it were a guarantee of being non-carrying Covid-19! What has become important today is not to die from this coronavirus… But if we do not intervene regularly, if the elderly do not move, they will die too. patients, to those who no longer walked when entering nursing homes and that we have remobilized so that they can do activities … Now they are in bed. I am scandalized, it is unfair and inhuman “.
“We are walking on our heads. Our care does not represent a vital emergency but a functional emergency. The less these people move, the more they lose their balance, the more they fall and the more they increase the workload of the caregivers. We must review the concept of priority care and not reportable to slow down the grabatisation of seniors “concludes Damien Olivon.
In nursing homes where care is maintained, residents appreciate. Like Henriette Léri, 91, who arrived just a month ago at the Sainte Monique residence in Toulouse. Confinement obliges, she goes from her room to the corridor. “With my physiotherapist, I do my little walk with a walker and I think I could not do without it, my knee does not hold me anymore”.
In Escalquens, physiotherapists were called back to treat patients
Not all nursing homes have closed their doors to outside workers, notably physiotherapists. This is the case at Escalquens, at the Ehp Borde-Haute (Edenis group) where Philippe Cabrol works with two other physiotherapists. “At the start, there was no longer any question of outside workers and then the director called us back. She found it more relevant that her patients continue to be followed because it was not enough to bring them to the end of the tunnel… So we got organized. From 12 physiotherapists, we went to 3, first for urgent care with around 40 residents and, little by little for the others. Make them walk a little, let them get some fresh air, it’s just humanity “, testifies Philippe Cabrol. An SAS was installed at the entrance to the nursing home. Like the other speakers, the physiotherapist goes there to change, measure his temperature and wash his hands. He also stopped home visits so as not to put the residents of the nursing home at extra risk and hopes to be tested in turn, “to be sure”.
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