Another short text from ‘Nous ne serons plus patients’, a book by health workers from France. We translated two texts already, which can be read here and here.

 

Testimony of a health care assistant

Hospital Purpan in Toulouse, 2019

Today I started work at 7am. Two patients had been waiting for hospital transport since 5 o’clock in the morning. Now it is 12:53 and they are still waiting for the ambulance to take them home.

A few weeks ago I went on strike, for better working conditions, for better care for the patients. As a result management has told us that they will add a second team for the discharge process. But today no one is able to tell me if this second team exists in reality, or just on paper.

What should I tell my patients who have been laying in stretchers for 20 hours, just because there are no means to bring them home? The truth. I tell them the truth. And still I apologise. Because despite all my efforts, the issue is not taken up by upper management, “we won’t call the senior administrator about a hypothetical problem” – hypothetical?!

Yesterday. Yesterday I was supposed to discharge and transport three elderly patients, who came to the hospital, because they were unable to stay home – whether alone or with someone. They were sent back home straightaway, not in order to get rid of them or because nothing could be done for them. But because there was not a single bed available in the hospital. Two of them had been discharged from the same hospital the day before, for the same reason. There are no beds, neither in the hospital, nor in the surrounding clinics. Nowhere!

When one asks for beds, that’s real, that’s not for show. People need them. I hate having to do this. And I am ashamed that I didn’t have the courage to call the son, who told me on the phone in the morning: “it is unacceptable that you have discharged my mother” and to whom I had responded sincerely “you are right, this should not have happened”. How can I call him four hours later and tell him that I will send him back his mother, who he cannot take care of, because she has special care needs which should be taken care of in hospital? I can’t. So I didn’t do it, I didn’t have the courage.

And this broke my heart. This lady, 90 years of age. Who didn’t dare to ask to be changed for hours. My colleague and I finally did it and while changing her we realised that this lady was wearing three layers of underwear in order to ‘protect’ herself. She had tears in her eyes and was ashamed. She told me “I am sorry and I feel ashamed, but they don’t help towards buying pads anymore, I had no choice”, then she told me that she had been a health care assistant herself… I tried my best to reassure her. But I felt really bad… She had no means to keep her dignity. How is that possible?

And this patient, she arrived asleep (fortunately), knocked out by multiple types of drugs. She had left the hospital on the same morning, after having been aggressive towards care staff and forcing the hospital security to run after her drug dealer. After my shift, once she woke up, she was violent towards hospital staff again. Her favourite game was to spray around her blood, saying “this is how you die of AIDS”. And yes, she had various serious and transmissible diseases. And yes, she will return and be aggressive again… until what exactly has to happen?!

And patients with dementia, for whom our services are not adapted, who wander around, enter other patients’ rooms and attack them. Do you find that normal? These could be your parents, your siblings, children, friends… this could be you!

We don’t have the means to do our work. We don’t have the means to take care of our patients and to protect them. We don’t have the means to protect ourselves.

It’s about time that this changed!

 

A strike on the roof
Le Havre, 20th of March 2018

For two weeks, a dozen care workers have been living and sleeping on the roof of the psychiatric hospital of Le Havre in order to denounce the bad state of their working conditions. Several testimonies had been published in Paris Normandie, which made clear that the care provided in this establishment is not exactly ‘humane’. “In the emergency department they cram together fifteen patients in rooms that are made for five”, says Olivier Legat, chief of psychiatric nursing. A nurses asks herself “How are you supposed to get better in here?”. Two beds had been added to her ward, one is a stretcher, the other one made up by putting two benches together.

 

A hospital welcome committee for the Minister
La Rochelle, June 2019

Around 150 striking workers from the hospital group La Rochelle-Rochefort, who had been joined by workers from emergency departments from neighbouring areas, played cat and mouse with the police, overflowing the emergency department, while following Minister of Health Agnes Buzyn in order to shout slogans at her: “Means for the hospital!”, “The hospital is not for sale!”, “Hospital in anger!”. After a visit of two hours the Minister of Health was let out through a back entrance of the hospital, according to AFP.