autumn promises to be “very complicated”, according to Samu-Urgences France

Autumn is comingcomplicated» for emergency services, mobile emergency services and resuscitation (Smur) and the 15th, whose teams “are wrung out“Warned on Monday the president of the Samu-Urgences de France (SUdF) association Marc Noizet, successor to the Minister of Health François Braun at the head of the organization.

“This fall is undoubtedly going to be very complicated, we don’t necessarily look to the future with a smile“, told AFP Dr. Noizet, also head of the emergency department of Mulhouse (Haut-Rhin). “The teams are strained, there is a strong expectation from professionals, we have very fragile teams, where people are demobilized, so from this start of the school year we will have to be able to give strong signals to professionals to prevent the bleeding from getting worse. and that some emergency services find themselves in even greater difficulty“, he estimated.

“Give a little hope to these services”

“All the measures that will be able to be sustained will be so many positive signals that will restore some hope to these services.“, considered Dr. Noizet, on the sidelines of a press conference on the experimentation in the Haut-Rhin of a mobile telemedicine team. Without yet being able to give a quantified assessment of activity for the emergency services during the summer months, Dr Noizet indicated that “probably, the activity in August of the emergency services was a little less important than expected“, while on the other hand the centers 15 experienced “a still significant increase in activity compared to 2021“. This can be explained in particular by the experimentation of the “prior systematic regulation“, asking sick people to call 15 rather than going to the emergency room directly.

Telemedicine also makes it possible to avoid many visits to the emergency room. Thus, the mobile telemedicine vehicle set up by the Sauv’Life association and tested since August 22 in the Alsatian department allows a home visit by a nurse who will organize a video consultation of the patient. “The healthcare professional will be the eyes and hands of the doctor who is at a distance“, which will avoid in the majority of cases a trip to the emergency room by ambulance when the doctor cannot go on site, explained Pr Lionel Lamhaut, founder of Sauv’Life.

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Sixteen vehicles of this type, at the request of the regulating doctors of the 15th, are already crisscrossing different departments, mainly for consultations with the elderly. “This is the big lesson of this summer: we can no longer work side by side, we have to be much more agile, more economical of the health system too.“, estimated Dr. Noizet.