The government brings out the first aid kit for the hospital. Brigitte Bourguignon, the Minister of Health, unveiled on Wednesday June 8 a series of “first steps” to try to calm the crisis in the emergency room, without waiting for the result of the “flash mission” commissioned by Emmanuel Macron. Ads that were quick to react to health professionals and unions.
Overtime paid double
Alerted for weeks to a risk of generalized syncope in the emergency services, the executive has brought out the treatments used during the epidemic peaks of Covid-19. Among them, we find overtime paid double. A measure supposed to respond to repeated requests for salary increases by caregivers, at a time when health professionals are in high demand.
“It’s a good measure because we make a lot of effort and it’s good to remunerate these efforts”, welcomed Rémi Salomon, the president of the medical commission of establishment of the Public Assistance-Hospitals of Paris (AP-HP). But the pediatric nephrologist also calls for the revaluation of guards and on-call duty. Thierry Amouroux, spokesperson for the National Union of Nursing Professionals (SNPI), also welcomed “good news”, although it should also “revise the ratios of patients to nurses to encourage those who have stopped practicing to come back to the hospital”.
The salary measure does not frankly convince François Salachas, neurologist at the Pitié-Salpêtrière hospital in Paris and member of the Inter-hospital Collective: “Are there the staff currently in the emergency room to ensure these overtime? Will these staff decide not to take a vacation when they are already exhausted by guards who are extremely repetitive? he asks.
“We have to restore confidence. And it is not with these increased overtime that confidence will return.”
François Salachas, neurologistat franceinfo
Combination of employment and retirement made easier
Faced with the lack of manpower, the Minister of Health also wants to bring back some retired health personnel. For this, Brigitte Bourguignon has promised to facilitate the accumulation of employment and retirement, a device which allows retired caregivers to resume a professional activity and to combine this income with their pensions. The government thus plans to increase the income ceilings and to open up new pension rights, according to the three unions representing liberal doctors. These measures had already been put in place during the Covid-19 crisis.
For its part, the National Union of Nursing Professionals remains perplexed. “There was a big problem during the Covid period with the combination of employment and retirement, with retired nurses coming in as reinforcements and after the pension fund demanded that they reimburse the salary they had received, which was totally inadmissible”worries their spokesperson Thierry Amouroux.
Future graduates mobilized
In addition to the measures already tested at the time of the Covid-19 crisis, the Minister of Health announced the establishment of a “exceptional device”. This should allow “student nurses and caregivers who completed their initial training in June and July [puissent] start practicing immediately, without waiting for their official graduation”.
“It’s just an administrative matter. If we can save a few weeks to recruit these young graduates, that’s a good thing.”
Rémi Salomon, pediatric nephrologiston franceinfo
“It’s already the case”, nuance the SNPI. “NOTyour minister is completely off the ground. As soon as the students have graduated, the nursing training institute issues a provisional certificate valid for three months already allowing them to workexplains its spokesperson, Thierry Amouroux. Unless [la ministre de la Santé] imagine that those who are waiting to take their exams are allowed to work without validating their skills, which would be challenging.”
“It shows how little we understood about the difficulties of recruitment.”
François Salachas, neurologistat franceinfo
The doctor of the Inter-hospital Collective denounces the choice of “send them to the fire immediately” and remember that “to be able to solidify knowledge, these young recruits must be in contact with elders who help them, who acclimatize them to a difficult profession”.