Sarah became a nurse during the pandemic, Anna has been an emergency doctor for ten years. Both share a feeling of exhaustion and abandonment of the nursing staff. Before the first round of the presidential election, they tell us about the immense difficulties of the public hospital.
We applauded them at 8 p.m. every day for the first containment to support them in fight against coronavirusEmmanuel Macron raised them to the rank of “hero in a white coat.” Words that have not been followed by real acts of support for the public hospital, believe many caregivers like Anna, an emergency doctor for ten years and Sarah, who became a nurse at the start of the pandemic.
Before the presidential election, while you are 7 million to have underlined in the Ma France 2022 consultation led by France Bleu that health must be a prioritythese two caregivers from Isère tell about their working conditions and their fears for the future of the public hospital, while the teams are exhausted by two years of pandemic.
Caregivers exhausted by the health crisis
Even if the worst of the health crisis seems to have passed, the tensions did not leave the hospital services. “We may, sometimes, be a little calmer in terms of covid, our current tensions are increased, it’s been two years, and the calm for the moment, it does not exist” believes Sarah, who completed her nursing studies as a covid backup. “We have so much intense fatigue inside us that finally, now, the slightest difficulty, which before, could have created very little disturbance, will really create disorder or disruption within the team, because We’ve been pulling on the rope for two years and we’re very tired.”
We are able to say very little about the patient because we haven’t had time to deal with him.
A professional for a year and a half, she already shares the same feeling of abandonment by caregivers and a hospital on the verge of breaking up than Anna, who has worked in the public hospital for ten years. Faced with a lack of resources, the teams are overwhelmed. Sarah sometimes handles patient admissions “the chain” and has the feeling of losing the human aspect of his profession. “We realize, at the end of the day, when we take over with the night shift, that in fact we are able to say very little about the patient because we haven’t had time to take care of it. We saw them quickly in the evening to give them their treatment and that’s it.”
This situation can “lead to make mistakes, not to see problems” laments the young nurse. In the emergency room either, the teams no longer have the time properly care for patients. “The guards have become untenable. When we make people wait ten hours on stretchers, when they deteriorate, when we recover people in really catastrophic states because we couldn’t see them before, when we make little grandpas wait 24/48 hours on stretchers, it’s not acceptable” Anna gets angry. “We feel like we’re being abusive when we’re supposed to be healing people.”
We feel like we’re being abusive when we’re supposed to be healing people.
Exhausted, some of his colleagues go private where wages are better, or just quit the job. “We see all our colleagues leaving little by little, doctors, nurses or nursing assistants. We see the great professionals leaving with whom we like to work, who are competent, and we are forced to patch up as best we can a hospital which is in the process of to fall into ruin.”
Hope for political change quickly dashed
Even if Anna has often asked herself the question of leaving, she is holding on for the moment because she “fundamentally believes in the public hospital.” She wants to “to be able to treat everyone and not just people who have money, that there is someone who can take care of themselves” of her or her children when they themselves have health concerns. “It’s also a team, in the emergency room we are very close. I think if it weren’t for the colleagues, we wouldn’t hold on and we would have already given up.”
It is this same commitment to public health which holds Sarah, when she wondered if she should not leave the public hospital where she has been practicing for only a year and a half. “We knew that the job was going to be difficult but we thought that we might be able to change things, or that it was going to change. Finally, we realize that even in a state of crisis, there is no much that changes.”
However, at the start of the health crisis, caregivers had a glimmer of hope for a possible change. The French applaud them every evening at 8 p.m. during the first confinement, and in his speeches, the Head of State Emmanuel Macron elevates them to the rank of “heroes in white coats, these thousands of admirable women and men whose only compass is care” and to which he expresses “recognition of the nation.”
We are told: come on, one more effort! But why ? For who ? In which way ? It has no more purpose!
“We had hope on the political level at the beginning of the covid, where we had the impression of being supported by the public authorities. Then we quickly understood that we would continue to be used simply as machines and to push to the breaking point” explains Anna, disillusioned. “We have seen it well in recent weeks, in recent months. We are told: come on, one more effort! But, for what? For whom? In what sense? It no longer has a purpose! We can’t hold on like that .”
Among the solutions envisaged to try to give emergency physicians a breath of fresh air: entrust some of their tasks to advanced practice nurses. But they have to be trained for two years and the public hospital has no more time according to Anna. “It’s not in ten years that we need solutions, it’s right now, it’s now! There is a vital emergency to save the public hospital, otherwise there will be no one left to heal people.”
Demonstrations, strikes, but a feeling of powerlessness
The loss of meaning in their missions and the deterioration of their working conditions has pushed thousands of caregivers on the street. Everywhere in France, they demonstrated, especially in June 2020 following the first confinement, and during Ségur, a major consultation led by the government on the health system.
A year later, the Isérois Olivier Véran, Minister of Health, unveils the proposals. He announces 15,000 recruitments in the public hospitalmore than 8 billion euros per year to upgrade health professions and €183 net per month for 1.5 million caregivers including nurses like Sarah. She hasn’t seen the color yet. “We were encouraged a lot, asked to bring out the best in ourselves, to bring out our values as caregivers and to remember that it is in these crises that we can be most useful to France” she says, a bit annoyed by all this communication. She was waiting for this “small compensation” as a sign of recognition. “When we are told that finally it will be in three months, and that in three months, we are not given anything… that does not necessarily make us want to continue.”
Le Ségur finally fed the anger of caregivers rather than calming it. For some, the vaccination obligation has added to the unbearable. New wave of protests a few months ago, at the end of 2021, new distress signal on the state of the public hospital. With her colleagues from the emergency room, Anna asks herself the question of taking part, of organizing, as in Voiron or Grenoble, minutes of silence around the slogan “Silence, the hospital is dying”, but for them, it was lost in advance.
– Noemie Philippot
The population must wake up because the hospital is collapsing and it is for them that there will be fallout.
“We discussed and we said to ourselves that in fact, we had no power anyway. Whatever method we could use, we would have no solution to make the public authorities move in our sense. We are shot” breathes the emergency doctor. “Protests have no power. Strikes, anyway, we just put on our vests and then we go to work.” As for the support of the population, it has gradually faded with the gradual return to a more normal life, “but there, the population must wake up because the hospital is collapsing and it is for them that there will be fallout.”
No expectation of the next government
The next possible mobilization would be at the polls with the presidential election next April but Anna and Sarah are disillusioned. It is difficult for her to be interested in the electoral campaign when they feel abandoned by politicians. “I have a little trouble listening to them, probably because every time they talk to us, they lie to us or they make us dream” says Sarah. She finds it hard to believe that the candidates have sustainable projects over time. “I think we’re going straight into the wall and whether it’s one or the other at the head of the state, it won’t change much.”
I think we’re going straight into the wall and whether it’s one or the other at the head of the state, it won’t change much.
“We even come to wonder if it is not a desire to let us down, to let the system collapse” adds Anna. “Being so wait-and-see in the face of this situation which is catastrophic, it is not possible that it is something that has not been decided, honestly. We wonder if they do not see or if they are waiting for it to collapse .” So she doesn’t even have no longer want to listen to the different candidates.
“I have no hope for what they can bring us. I tell myself that the solutions we can find will be solutions that will come from us, but are we still going to have the energy to engage them? I don’t know.” Despite everything, she is still a priest to fight, “It’s now or never because in a few months it will be too late.”
Both will vote anyway, without putting too much meaning in their ballot, but to honor this right obtained 78 years ago for women. Then they will put on their white coats to continue carry the public service at arm’s length in the corridors of the hospital.