Up to six hours of waiting, pediatric emergencies saturate and remind good practices

“We are overworked. This translates into waiting times sometimes ranging from 6 to 8 hours, with the risk of catching viruses that we did not have when arriving, ”notes Professor Isabelle Claudet, head of pediatric emergencies at the Toulouse University Hospital. . After a slight lull, his service has taken the full brunt of several epidemic waves at the same time in recent days.

In addition to Covid-19, children are admitted for high fevers due to the flu, or for acute gastroenteritis. “We reach 200 to 220 visits to the emergency room of the children’s hospital every day when we should have 120 to 140. There is the pressure of epidemics and at the same time we are faced with absenteeism in our services, the caregivers who are also sick, on maternity leave or even exhausted. It is difficult to recruit after two years of Covid, ”recognizes the manager who calls on parents to first resort to city medicine. The vast majority of emergency care is the responsibility of the attending physician.

Priority to the general practitioner

“They have to go to their doctor and keep the appointments given to them. Often they come for something that could be settled with their GP, but they don’t wait and want to be reassured right away. We prioritize the children according to the severity, suddenly they wait and get angry, this leads to frustration and tension towards the caregivers who do not need that, ”laments the pediatrician. A few weeks ago, one of the members of the emergency department was molested in this way.

To avoid these situations, it therefore recalls that priority must be given to the attending physician, even if more and more practitioners tend to close their practice before 7 p.m., leaving a period of emptiness before the opening of the permanent care At 20 o ‘clock. This is available every evening, weekends and public holidays included, on 39 66. But also by SOS doctors 31 on 05 61 33 00 00 or the on-call medical centers of La Faourette on 05 34 46 54 76 or the City of Health on 05 61 59 22 12.