despite 15,000 vacancies, paramedics are having great difficulty recruiting staff

There is an urgent need to recruit for paramedics, who also face great difficulties in finding staff. It must be said that the job is tough. When they work for the Samu once or twice a week, Mohamed Dara, manager of an ambulance company in Drancy, and his paramedics work 12-hour days. And that’s part of what turns job candidates off.

“Me, I’ve been in this for 40 years, and it’s never given me a problem.“, he explains. Today, “the young people who do the training, they do not stay in the profession“, notes Mohamed Dara, “IThey come, they feel, they look, and then it doesn’t suit them“. The question of wages also always comes up: “they want a very, very high salary, and we can’t control that.“

However, 15,000 positions are to be filled according to the federations of the sector, twice as many as last year. Faced with these recruitment difficulties, Mohamed Dara was forced to reduce his workforce. He went from nine to three paramedics, and in his sector as in others, it is partly because of the Covid crisis.

“Already before the Covid, we had a lot of trouble finding staff. But after the Covid, it was a carnage, we couldn’t find anyone.”

Mohamed Dara, paramedic

at franceinfo

He too has seen many departures with the health crisis. “People left the profession. I have employees who, overnight, when the Covid started worked one day, two days and left given the situation on the ground“, says the paramedic. “They were scared, they wanted to protect their family, I don’t know. Since then, we struggle“, he continues. This problem is general in the profession, “all the colleagues, the fellow-members around” are also affected, says Mohamed. And to cite examples:Some have vehicles parked in the park because they don’t have the staff to turn them around.”

To remedy this problem, ambulance federations have several options. They would first like to be able to break down the barrier of the probationary permit, in order to be able to recruit young people from the age of 18, instead of waiting for the 21st. To attract staff, employers will not escape the question of wages either. Currently, a paramedic in the private sector is paid at minimum wage level when hired. The professionals explain that they have no margin, and are demanding an extension of the health insurance budget or a reduction in charges for night hours, in order to be able to increase salaries.