The drop in the number of intern positions “will have an impact” on public hospitals, insists the Samu Urgences de France union

The drop in the number of intern positions in the fall “will have an impact” on the hospital, supports Friday August 16 on franceinfo Marc Noizet, president of the Samu Urgences de France union. According to the figures published at the beginning of July in the Official Journal, there will be 7,974 new interns next year, compared to 9,484 in 2023, or 1,510 fewer positions.

For Marc Noizet, this decline will be felt above all in “university hospitals (…) of which 40% of medical resources are made up of interns”. While the hospital is already seriously short of caregivers, the president of Samu Urgences de France believes that the hospital risks “compensate with other resources, probably foreign doctors” or of “change organizations”.

The government justifies this drop in the number of open intern positions by the decrease in the number of candidates for the competitive examinations to begin the internship. However, this can be explained by the very revolt of the interns. After the reform of the second cycle of health studies, the competitive examination was modified, with a new version which notably introduces a cut-off mark of “14/20 to be able to pass the oral exam”itself modified with “a clinical simulation”To denounce this reform, some “sulked at the exam” : “A third failed the written exam and therefore could not take the oral exam and two thirds did not show up and therefore spontaneously repeated the year”specifies Marc Noizet.

If the Ministry of Higher Education tells franceinfo that it is “it is normal to adapt the number of positions available to the number of candidates in order to maintain the same requirements”the interns do not see it in the same way. Marc Noizet assures “understand the grumbling of interns who find themselves with a ranking that does not allow them to reach the desired specialty”.

The head of the Samu Urgences de France union speaks of “negotiations in progress between the interns and the two ministries which supervise this training”. “Agreements will probably be found because the work must be highlighted [que les internes] have completed during the six years of theoretical training and that they can be brought to be able to access the positions”he adds. He fears that French students will throw in the towel in France and prefer to complete their studies in another country. “We trained them, they must be able to complete their training, we must find common ground”he insists.