Nathalie dreamed of becoming a doctor, but after two years of internship at the Bichat hospital in Paris, she began to become disillusioned. Like seven out of ten interns, she works well over 48 hours a week. “I work 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. every dayshe says. We will say that it has been around sixty hours constantly. And the weeks when I have guards or on-call duty, we can add 20 hours or 15 hours on weekends.
“I have already done weekends too where I was on call on Saturday and Sunday, then I had night duty in the emergency room on Sunday. So, in fact, there is no rest.
Nathalie, internat franceinfo
Intern unions are threatening to attack hospitals for excessive overtime. There are 70% of apprentice doctors who greatly exceed the 48 legal weekly hours. The trade unions have issued an ultimatum to hospital directors: if they do not respect the law by the end of October, they will sue them before the administrative court.
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“We’re on edge”explains Nathalie when asked what state she finds herself in to work after having accumulated all these hours. “Already there are interns who do not keep guards in the emergency roomshe explains. Many interns try to give them back for a lot of money so as not to have to suffer them.”
“There are interns who have stopped. Some interns have been found in the reserves taking medication to hold on. We are in a pretty sorry state.”
According to a study, conducted in 2020 by the Jean Jaurès Foundation, the risk of suicide in an intern is three times higher than in another Frenchman of the same age.
The fatigue induced by these extended hours often pushes them to make mistakes. “We are constantly tiredconfides Nathalie. It involves more or less serious errors. For example, discharging a patient with the wrong treatment, forgetting to fast someone for an exam the next day. It happened to me, it happens to all of us. Exchanges of prescriptions for patients just because we were not careful: we open the software, we prescribe and it was not the right patient. There is always someone to catch up on what we are doing. So in general, mistakes don’t have consequences.”
For these 60 to 80 hours of work per week, and while she is in her 8th year of medicine, Nathalie earns less than 1700 euros per month.