2023-11-04 13:01:02
Professor of genetics, internationally recognized for his research on the role of DNA in the causes of cancer, Thierry Frébourg was one of the leaders of the Rouen University Hospital (Seine-Maritime). Which did not prevent him, on March 12, 2021, from being the victim of a medical error within the neurology department of the same establishment where he was being treated for optic neuritis. And to die the next day at the Garches hospital center, where he had been transferred to try to be saved. He was 60 years old.
A tragedy for his family, the international scientific community, his numerous students… And for his peers obviously since, requested by his widow, the council of the order of Seine-Maritime had taken up the case of Professor Frébourg. Two hospital practitioners from the neurology department of the Rouen University Hospital were thus heard by the Normandy disciplinary chamber of the order of doctors. And the latter has just made its decision by reprimanding the head of the department concerned. And four months of suspension, two of which were suspended, to the neurologist responsible for the treatment. Sanctions once morest which they can appeal.
Several breaches of the code of ethics
“As a general rule, less than one in two complaints results in an ethical sanction and suspensions are particularly rare. This decision reveals the failures of our health system which led to this tragedy,” underlines Me Antoine Béguin, the lawyer for the deceased’s family. This is also what his brother, Olivier Frébourg, a recognized author and publisher, has already underlined in “Frere unique”. This book, published at the beginning of October, looks back on the disappearance of the man who was both his model and his hero. “A professor of medicine led to his death by the hand of his own hospital is a parable of the collapse of our common home, the public hospital,” he writes by way of introduction.
The Rouen University Hospital no longer wishes to make any public comments on this matter.
The disciplinary chamber noted in its two decisions several breaches of the medical code of ethics, as well as “the radically unsuitable nature of the protocol then in force” which led to the medical error – an incorrectly removed catheter – which caused a gas embolism within a few hours. fatal pulmonary. More generally, the lack of support and empathy towards Professor Frébourg’s family is highlighted, with the added bonus of the absence of brotherhood for his wife, herself a doctor in biology at the Rouen University Hospital.
The disciplinary body is also not kind towards the hospital establishment which no longer wishes to make public comments on this file. She thus recalls that he “published (…) a press release arguing, in a crude and obviously erroneous manner, that the death of Professor F. was due to an acute complication of the illness for which he was being treated”. An assertion once morest which those close to the geneticist had protested from the start. With success since medical malpractice has since been clearly established by the Normandy Conciliation and Compensation Commission.
“Not telling the whole truth regarding a man’s death is killing him twice”
But for Olivier Frébourg, the moral fault is perhaps even more serious. “Not telling the whole truth regarding the death of a man is killing him twice,” he asserts in his work where the sunny personality of his brother contrasts with the coldness of an institution which, according to him , “was locked in denial from the start. We were in a process of truth. But very quickly, we had the intuition that it would not happen like that.” Her sister-in-law tells her that a resuscitator, even before her husband died, did not consider that there had been a problem in his care. But that “due to lack of luck it had to fall on Professor Frébourg”.
“Lack of luck, but for whom? The family or the hospital? », asks the writer. “If it had been an average patient, would the error have been less serious? “. Today, the latter, even if he considers that “the decision rendered by the disciplinary chamber is a first victory in our quest for justice”, is still waiting for the Rouen University Hospital to officially recognize its wrongs. And not only through a financial compensation procedure still under investigation. “Humanity is undoubtedly what characterized my brother the most. And it is this humanity that we deprive him of by still not paying him an official tribute. By refusing him a public apology. Trying to erase his memory. The institution prefers to follow its logic to the end when it should show courage by taking responsibility for its mistakes. »
Ultimately, for him, this behavior is the symptom of a deeper evil, which is eroding public health from within in France where “the accountant and the HR manager have taken precedence over the nurse and the surgeon”, regrets- he said bitterly. “Abuses once morest which my brother had always spoken out.”
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