2024-02-25 03:00:04
In front of the psychiatry department of Purpan hospital, in Toulouse, February 20, 2024. PATRICK BATARD / HANS LUCAS
Ten days after the suicide of a patient in the psychiatric emergency room of Purpan hospital (Toulouse University Hospital), on February 14, the emotion among caregivers has not subsided. The 49-year-old man, on a stretcher for ten days, was waiting for a bed to be hospitalized in a psychiatric ward. This death occurred after several other serious events in the Toulouse emergency room at the beginning of February – a suspected rape and sexual assault of two patients.
On site, on February 20, the Minister for Health, Frédéric Valletoux, announced an upcoming mission from the general inspection of social affairs, and confirmed the opening of 15 hospital beds “post-emergencies”, promised by the management of the CHU and the regional health agency the day after the tragedy. The minister also called for “firm measures” towards the private sector, which represents three quarters of the territory’s psychiatry supply. A territorial regulatory unit must now make it possible to guarantee a hospital bed for patients who need it.
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“For years we have been faced with hypertension in the psychiatry sector, of which emergencies are the receptacle”, reacts Professor Christophe Arbus, head of the psychiatry center, while specifying that waiting times in the emergency room for a hospital bed are normally around three to four days on average. “There is enormous emotion in the service, we have exhausted teams”, he describes. Two thirds of the 58 members of the team of nurses and caregivers were on sick leave as of February 23. The white plan, intended for crisis situations, was triggered by the hospital on February 20, allowing reorganizations and calling on other staff.
“The caregivers experienced two horrible weeksreports Julien Terrier, secretary of the CGT in the establishment. They inevitably feel guilty, it’s their patient, even if they have nothing to do with it, but also angry because they have been warning about this situation for years. » Several procedures for “serious and imminent danger” have been filed in recent years, recalls the union official, who denounces, in the face of “decay of public psychiatry”, of the “Half measures that don’t get to the root of the problem”.
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