Purpan emergency strike in Toulouse, SAMU 31 is stormed
Fifth Monday strike in the emergency room of the Purpan hospital in Toulouse. Only vital emergencies are taken care of until Tuesday morning at 8 a.m. The movement aims to ask for more resources. Management has proposed 16 additional posts for Purpan emergencies. This does not satisfy the striking staff. And the duration of the movement.
Result, the SAMU has fewer solutions to direct patients, and many more calls. To get an idea of the difficulty, SAMU 31 agreed to open its doors to us. The call center is installed on the Purpan hospital site. Inside, a large room, quiet, with about fifteen professionals in white in front of their computers, headset and microphone in their mouths. The calls are linked and the emergency strike complicates the deal to find care for the patient.
You must know that SAMU 31 receives nearly 1,000 calls per day. A figure up 20% over one year. Last Sunday alone, 400 ambulances were dispatched during the day. This situation also increases the waiting time for users who call 15. This is problematic, explains the head of the SAMU 31 department, Professor Vincent Bounes.
“For some patients, the delay can reach several tens of minutes, which is sometimes very long when you have a patient in an ambulance who is not always in optimal condition. Clearly, at present, extending these delays , it’s never good for patients. Or waiting for ambulances before treatment. This situation also creates an overload of work. Stress and fatigue are also factors of error. We take care by reinforcing a pause zones, trying to turn a little more. But we are not immune to increasing our error rate linked to this overload of work. It is even a fear that is completely proven.”