how Clémentine Vergnaud’s podcast helped change the way caregivers view their cancer patients

Professor Cindy Neuzillet never met Clémentine Vergnaud. She never treated it at the Curie Institute in Paris where she specializes in digestive oncology, but as soon as the podcast came out, she listened to it twice in a row: “I experienced this podcast as a journey through the illness, through his eyes.”

Clémentine Vergnaud recounted in this podcast her treatments, her life in the hospital, but also at length her relationship with her doctors like this moment at the end, when her oncologist talks to her about stopping the treatments: “It relieved me enormously to hear it also from her mouth,” said Clémentine. “Because there is a moment when you feel guilty, when you say to yourself it’s me who’s giving up, it’s me who no longer has this strength. And to hear that even in the voices of the doctors, it would be a mistake to cling to this point. It did me a lot of good.

This passage had a great impact on Professor Cindy Neuzillet: “We say to ourselves as caregivers, when we show empathy, when we listen, when we try to put ourselves in the place. And it’s true that we listen to what patients tell us. But patients don’t tell us everything in as much detail as she described, including many things that she didn’t necessarily say to her oncologist. As a teacher for our medical students, for our internal colleagues, it was a precious testimony to be able to help find the right words.” Professor Cindy Neuzillet now advises all her medical students to listen to Clémentine Vergnaud’s podcast.

Clémentine has left her mark on the hospital world more generally. The students of the Rennes School of Advanced Studies in Public Health, the future hospital directors, have decided to name their class Clémentine Vergnaud. Giving the name of a patient is rare; the idea came from Lucas Lachambre. “For us, it was a very strong message because it is in fact positioning ourselves in a cultural changee, he explains. Because in fact the hospital is subject to numerous constraints: financial constraints, human resources constraints, issues of loss of meaning as well.”

“Taking the name of a patient is a way of emphasizing the fact that we wanted our professional practice, even if we are not caregivers, to be focused entirely on the interests and dignity of the patient. patient.”

Lucas Lachambre, student at the School of Advanced Studies in Public Health

at franceinfo

The patient who must remain there “compass of our profession in the coming decades”concludes this future hospital director.

This Friday, October 4, one of our radio studios will be renamed “Studio Clémentine Lecalot-Vergnaud”, named after our colleague who died in 2023 at the age of 31 from bile duct cancer. A testimonial book is also being published this Friday. It comes from the podcast she recorded during her fight against illness My life facing cancer: Clémentine’s diary. The royalties will be donated to research against the cancer from which she died.