Tell me ,because when you ring 18 in my department ,22, you arrive at a switchboard and the person replying will decide who to contact pompiers samu etc is it not the same in all departments?
I suspect it will be the same…
Pompiers are first-responders (as described on their site) but it will depend on the individual situation (as reported by the Caller) what response they organise… and they might well organise Samu if that is deemed suitable.
On the other hand… (from personal experience) Pompiers cannot intervene … if Samu has already been contacted by said Caller …
Although Samu might well contact the Pompiers themselves if they deem it suitable…
When OH had his fatal AVC, we immediately called the pompiers locally but SAMU came instead and we then saw the pompiers at our neighbour’s house where the daughter had collapsed with peritonitis, so it was automatically done for us and I could not fault them at all. We all arrived at urgences at the same time, luckily for the neighbour, she recovered, OH never came home!
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Yep… Pompiers organise things to help us all… 
Recap then ,ring 18 .
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OK, all is now sorted. Pharmacie was no real help, they said they could sell us bandages etc but that was all. They said to go to Urgence, so we did. No questions as to why we were there, details taken straight away, seen by a triage doctor within 30 minutes and he said we did the right thing to come to Urgence. X-ray to check if finger bone broken, which it wasn’t. Nail was in three pieces and the nail bed was split. Nail had to be removed and nail bed stitched under local anaesthetic. From start to finish, just less than three hours in total, which was superb especially as people were coming in all the time and they only currently have half an Urgence as part of it is being refitted and an extension is being built. All power to the doctors,nurses and other staff that made it all possible 
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So sensible. OH crushed a finger in a car door and DIDN’T do anything other than bandage it and refuse to look at it - I now know better and will insist next time. Three days later we were at the doctors at 8 in the morning for an emergency appointment and got a right telling off from the doctor - much easier to attend to a fresh wound. OH finished up having to go to our local nurse for the next two weeks having his dressing changed and the wound checked - he got a lecture from the nurse every time.
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and it’s quite possible that your Doc would have said same as the Pharmacy…
Hope it heals very quickly.
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Ouch! Hoping for a good recovery, and faster than expected.
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Thanks for you’re thoughts. The nurse should be coming on Saturday to change the dressing, so we’ll get to see what it looks like then.
Its OK, we have got past the grief stage now after all this time and memories have taken over instead especially for the kids Thank you for your kind thoughts anyway and I am sure there are plenty of other folks on SF who have lost loved ones too. Time is a great healer they say, its perfectly true.
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Do only artists, pre-digital designers and photographers leave scalpels lying around the house ? Does anyone else even own one? I’ve got a Swann-Morton in the kitchen and another on the bookcase. Next to the latter is a box of 100 10A blades, personally imported pre-Brexit as a precaution…
We have a box too; mainly for taking clean cuttings, but also other fiddly stuff.
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I bet you don’t leave them lying around like us lot 
The Swan-Morton with a 10a blade was the guilty culprit!
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Some time in the pre-Photoshop era, I remember reading that approximately 99% of UK graphic designers preferred a Swann-Morton 10A surgical scalpel blade to a US Exacto. In those days everything was done with photocopied Cow-Gum paste-ups and Rapidograph touching up (it had another meaning in those innocent times!) This was another world, but one that had its charms (tho’ all my handkerchiefs - remember those? had indelible Rotring ink stains).
The above may seem esoteric to most people, but I hope it’ll trigger a few memories for some on SF
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I had something similar (but so bad as your OH) had a split in my finger which was bleeding profusely, but I thought it was not serious enough for a doctor or hospital, so tried the local pharmacy. My finger was examined and cleaned and one of those stitch bandages was applied to pull the skin together. The staff didn’t hesitate to take action!