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AFP, published Tuesday 17 November 2020 at 07:17
A practitioner in a hospital in the Paris region, on the front line since January to treat patients with severe forms of Covid-19, an anesthetist-resuscitator delivers his crisis diary for AFP every week, on condition of medical anonymity.
“I have the impression that things are calming down. We still have about 15 more beds than our normal activity and there are about one or two admissions a day for Covid patients in intensive care.
This week we also welcomed patients from other regions. There is currently a little less pressure on intensive care hospital beds in Ile-de-France. There is still no “decline” in ICU but standard inpatient units remain under relatively pressure.
We hope things continue to evolve in the right direction. We are pleased to see a respite, but we still have to keep in mind that for a month and a half we have been working at “excessive speed” again and that we wish to be able to reduce the number of ICU beds as soon as possible and return to more standard functioning.
Epidemiological notions are quite abstract for us. As long as our intensive care units are full, we are welcoming patients and have additional doctors on hand, it doesn’t mean much to us every day whether or not we have reached the peak of the epidemic.
On the other hand, there is a real gap between the view of public authorities and ours. Our ministers are pleased to see that we are able to distribute intensive care beds in an emergency and respond to a health crisis.
It is obvious that we will not allow people to suffocate at the hospital doors for lack of means and beds. It is obvious that in all French hospitals, doctors and paramedical teams have taken on their responsibilities and have been working tirelessly for months. But this shouldn’t be overly congratulated.
– Deprogramming –
We would like to have more hospital beds, ICU or not, and more staff on a daily basis. I don’t think we should be content with deprogramming, the only way we have to free up beds and staff.
That some things can be postponed, sure, but we are currently deprogramming about 50% of the hospital’s medical-surgical activity. We do not believe that half of our daily work in the public hospital, and therefore half of our patients, deserves to be considered “secondary”.
More beds, more staff, clean and functioning hospitals cost money, but that’s what we need to do our jobs properly.
For the rest we are like everyone else. If we can quickly regain some social freedom, we will be happy. We are not here to lecture on this or that measure to be taken.
The only thing we will dare to ask when a safe and effective vaccine becomes available is for people to be vaccinated. But we are in France, and it is not won …
Finally, the week was marked by the commemoration of November 13, 2015. No official ceremony in the hospital, but each of the doctors, nurses and hospital attendants retains a moving and deeply painful memory of that atrocious night. In five years, our profession has changed a lot. “
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