Covid In France: The healthcare system across France is facing a cumulative pandemic.
Dr. Ruxandra Divan, an intensive care anesthesiologist in eastern France, slumped against the wall of her ward, exhausted at the prospect of having to deal with a new wave of COVID-19 with an exhausted staff. exhausted.
“It’s tiring,” Divan said Wednesday, in the middle of her shift at Colmar Hospital, near France’s borders with Germany and Switzerland. “People are fed up with dealing with unvaccinated patients. We’re really tired.”
Healthcare systems across Europe are facing more COVID-19 hospitalizations, with infection rates rising rapidly and adding uncertainty about how the new Omicron variant will affect health community health.
In the city of Colmar, the task was made more difficult as teams had to deal with a new wave of sick leave, those who quit and low morale among those who stayed.
In her office, Dr. Elisabeth Gaertner, who runs the intensive care service for Colmar’s public hospital system, reviews her list of people on sick leave: 4 out of 20 care assistants, 5 out of 15 cleaners, 5 out of 37 nurses in surgical intensive care.
Other employees have quit, many of them drawn to work in private clinics, or in nearby Switzerland, for higher pay and fewer tax hours.
One factor that alienated staff, she said, was that most of the most severe cases they had to treat in the latest batch were people who chose not to get vaccinated.
“There was a sense of anger and frustration,” among hospital staff, Gaertner said.
Fragile system
The healthcare system across France is suffering the cumulative strain of nearly two years of the pandemic.
Health Minister Olivier Veran, in an October interview with French newspaper Liberation, said his ministry estimates there will be almost a third more vacancies for medical professionals this fall. compared to the same period in 2019.
France’s Scientific Council, which advises the government on COVID-19, said in an October 5 report that the health care system “has become fragile after long periods of COVID, where it’s always on the front lines.”
Dr Eric Thibaud, who runs the Emergency Department at Colmar hospital, says 10% of his staff are on sick leave.
In the past few weeks, a department doctor has left to work elsewhere with fewer night and weekend shifts, a nurse has left, and a receptionist has left.
However, his staff is relatively stable, he said. Other units in the hospital have been hit harder.
“There’s a huge number of people leaving burnout, people who are changing their lives, people who don’t want to conform to what they’ve had to deal with over the years, and have recently getting worse.”
At the Intensive Care Unit where Dr. Divan works, all 13 beds are now filled with COVID-19 patients. Of these, 11 were unvaccinated. All are relatively young. They have been intubated and are being ventilated.
What frustrates employees, she said, is that this outcome could have been avoided if those people had chosen to be vaccinated.
“It is increasingly difficult for people to come and care for COVID patients,” said Divan, who moved to France from Romania. “Why is all this distrusting vaccines? I don’t understand.”
(This story has not been edited by NDTV staff and was automatically generated from the feed provided.)
