Through Julien munoz
Published on 18 Apr 21 at 12:00
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Outside, in front of the entrance, a woman calls a friend on the phone to explain her anger at not being able to enter the emergencies at the Cotentin Public Hospital, in Cherbourg, to see a loved one.
We have to deal with the misunderstandings of some families. The Covid complicates everything, including that.
The coronavirus is now part of the scene in the service. A screening takes place for suspected cases. Until last June, it took 24 hours to find out if a symptomatic patient was positive for Covid. Since then, the answer falls within two hours. All people called to be hospitalized in a department are also tested.
Work in progress
Work is underway until the end of the summer to improve the reception and care of patients.
While renovation work may have taken place a few years ago, the premises date back several decades. In the meantime, emergencies have become in the eyes of society an increasingly frequent medical remedy.
Because there are the dramas of life and the sores. Because it becomes difficult to have an attending physician, that after a certain time, the service appears as a rare solution. Because geographically, it is at the crossroads of many lives, 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
The realities of society
–Since the 1980s, hospitals have shown the desire toimprove flow management in emergency services. This corresponded with the establishment of the post of reception and guidance nurse.
More the excesses of society and aggressiveness don’t stop at the emergency room door. It is no coincidence, after all, that one of the first video surveillance systems installed in Cherbourg had been in the emergency room.
It is a service where verbal, and more rarely physical, violence can occur, we must not hide it. Stress is often there when a patient arrives in the emergency room, and it is understandable. The teams are in the accompaniment, the understanding.
In recent years, an estimated waiting counter exist. “We have already had people who, for pain, prefer to come around midnight rather than 8 pm because there was an estimated two-hour wait, remembers Fanny Billières, head of the emergency department. We also have people who have been predicted to wait two hours and who after 2:10 start tapping on the watch and waving! “
Peaks of activity
Slowed down around the same time last year by the first wave of Covid, activity has since returned to a classic curve. In recent months, 100 to 110 passages per day are counted. The hospital has not experienced an epidemic peak in relation to the viruses that usually circulate in winter, masks and barrier gestures oblige. When the activity could in the past exceed 180 passages, some days.
The situation is more tense again these days.
In the meanders of the emergency halls, stretchers cross the day and night. Sometimes empty, to prepare transfers. Sometimes full of pain, when life plays spells. Small, big, bad.
–Seven boxes are provided for versatile reception, five for vital emergencies, seven for trauma (six, plus a plaster room). Plus eight places for patients in the short-term hospitalization unit. This does not always prevent, unfortunately, from crossing full stretchers, at the bend of a corridor, on days of intense activity, or when a bed cannot be found in the upstairs services.
It is a service that some young caregivers like, with a lot of adrenaline on certain days. It calls for a certain versatility, because we are faced with issues that relate to several specialties.
Vocations … which wear out
–In other words, “we can say that here, the routine does not settle”, as adds Karine Hébert. After a certain number of months or years, however, vocations wear out. The emergencies have a rather complete technical platform (biology, radiography, ultrasound, scanner and MRI) to make diagnoses.
The emergency medical team is made up of three emergency physicians during the day and in the evening; at night, two emergency doctors. When the Cherbourg SMUR is not in operation, the SMUR doctor provides additional support.
Today we have 13 FTEs. In the organization, three do 24 hour cycles, one 13 hours and another 10 hours. On the SMUR, it is also 24 hours.
A hundred people in the service
The medical team is also supplemented by interns, under the responsibility of the doctors. In all, 35 paramedics (with almost equal distribution of nursing assistants and nurses) accompany them in turn.
In all, around 100 nursing assistants and nurses work in the service. On twelve hour days, alternating day and night cycles, when possible.
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