“You work an hour at night, when you are a nurse, it’s one euro more. At the end of a ten-hour night, you get ten euros more”, denounced Yannick Jadot, the ecological presidential candidate, guest of franceinfo on Monday, December 13. Yannick Jadot assures us that the hospital is “on the verge of breaking up“and that the money promised by the Ségur de la Santé is not enough. “You have nurses who today treat twice as many patients as the health safety rules”, he added.
Contacted by franceinfo, the HRD of a French public hospital confirms the figures put forward by Yannick Jadot. According to this hospital framework, when a nurse works night hours, he receives precisely € 1.07 (gross) more, or € 10.70 for a 10-hour night. Weekends worked are hardly better paid: € 47.85 gross more per weekend.
Yannick Jadot also ensures that nurses treat “twice as many patients as the health safety rules”. This statement is difficult to verify because the numbers mobilized vary depending on the hospital. In most departments, it is the hospital management that decides on the number of staff needed to deploy, most often on the basis of bed occupancy rates.
But for certain specific services, it is the law which provides a precise framework. The Public Health Code, for example, imposes two nurses for five patients in intensive care units, one for four in intensive cardiological care during the day, at least one for eight at night. But even in these services framed by law, a report from the Court of Auditors in 2019 estimated that the ratios were not always respected in certain hospitals in the Paris region of the AP-HP (Assistance Publique – Hôpitaux de Paris).