Emergency rooms in around fifty hospitals are saturated due to lack of staff

© ludovic MARIN/AFP/Archives Frédéric Valletoux, in the courtyard of the Elysée Palace, September 18, 2018.

The government announced it itself, the emergency departments of “around fifty hospitals” are in a “tense” situation throughout France. The height of it, knowing that it has also just eliminated 1,510 medical intern positions. This new information, which is not a surprise, could not have come at a worse time.

Every summer, French hospitals experience a staff shortage that impacts emergency services. However, let's be cautious, the resigning Minister Delegate for Health, Frédéric Valletoux, assures that things have improved compared to last year.

As reported by AFP, people who go to the services must expect an “interminable” waiting time, subtleties of access to allow the regulation of the service, namely calling 15 in advance before being authorized to enter the buildings, or even the total closure of the service.  

In slight contradiction with Mr. Valletoux's remarks, the president of the SAMU-Urgences de France union, Marc Noizet, claims that the situation is “at least equal to, if not worse than that of 2023.” The few areas spared by “rolling closures” would be the Île-de-France region as well as certain places that hosted the Olympic events.

For Arnaud Robinet, the president of the French Hospital Federation (FHF), the “situation [is] very contrasting and heterogeneous” across the territory. On France Inter, he calls for “strengthening the complementarity between public and private”, as well as working on an “internal reorganization” of establishments. This would be the starting point for a more significant questioning on the issue of the attractiveness of careers within hospital services.

The minister remains aware of the difficulties, however, describing them as “delicate situations to regulate”. The Brest University Hospital, for example, claims an average waiting time of nine hours “between arrival and exit from the emergency room”. Frédéric Valletoux tries to be reassuring, arguing that it is usually more like “six or seven hours”. A situation that remains undesirable, especially when it comes to emergencies.

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