While the profession was a dream of many, more and more nursing students are stopping their training along the way, shocked or disillusioned by the reality of the profession in the field.
It is the illustration of a disillusion. In France, training in nursing studies is the second most requested by high school students on Parcoursup, with 658,000 wishes in 2023. But once the school is integrated (nearly 35,500 admissions in 2021 in more than 300 establishments in France), the dropout rate for first-year nursing students is 10%, three times higher than ten years ago, according to a report by DREES published on 11 May. On the whole of the schooling of the promotion entering in 2018, this figure even climbs to 14%.
A precocious disenchantment which is explained, in large part, by the first difficult steps in the professional world. A survey by the National Federation of Nursing Students (Fnesi), published in May 2022, claims that 59.2% of students have already thought about stopping their training. The main cause ? “A concern in training”for 32% of them. Lack of supervision, humiliations, financial precariousness, health system out of breath… Franceinfo gives the floor to four students who gave up their dream to preserve their mental health.
Margot: “Nurses at the end of their career are taking revenge on us”
Before joining a nursing training institute (Ifsi) in Bordeaux, Margot thought she would discover “a job that makes sense” And “contribute modestly to the well-being of people”. “I thought so naively”, she admits. During her first internship in an Ehpad, the student quickly found herself caught between the desire to do well and the need to do it quickly.
“If a resident asked me to go to the bathroom, I had to tell him to use his diaper to have time to shower another.”
If this abuse “unwanted” And “institutional” shocks her, she points out that her second internship, also in nursing home, was “much more dramatic”. “My internship tutor humiliated me in front of residents, families, colleagues… One day, when I was crying in the toilets, she said to me: ‘Anyway, you’re too bad, you’re not Nothing’. I’ve lost some hair because of the stress”, says the young woman. She shared her experience with her school, who simply replied: “You are there to learn”.
Difficult, according to her, to talk about suffering at work when you are a young person who is just starting out. “Some nurses at the end of their career assume that we have not endured enough to be able to complain. In a way, they are taking revenge on us”. If other internships subsequently went better, Margot accumulated “too much trauma”. She definitely stopped her nursing training in 2019, after repeating her second year. She now works in leather goods.
François: “I was an employee at one euro an hour who hurt the residents, it was unbearable”
While working in the trade, François wishes “do more by helping people”. “Care has never scared me in itself”explains the young man, who joined a Marseille Ifsi in 2021 … before leaving it in the first year. “If I had had a better internship, maybe I would have been a nursesays the young man. It’s not the job that disgusted me, but the coaching.” His first and only internship in an Ehpad was “catastrophic”. “I was shown how to do a quick wash and then told to do it. I felt like I was annoying everyone by asking questions, when I was clearly not ready”, judge Francois.
“I didn’t learn anything between the beginning and the end of the course.”
To make ends meet, François exhausts himself on weekends working in a restaurant, in addition to his week at the nursing home. “When you are paid 36 euros per week and you receive 400 euros in scholarships per month, it is clearly not enough to live on, he complains. I was a one-euro-an-hour wage earner who hurt the residents. It was unbearable.” At school, he was told to “grit one’s teeth”. According to him, “between 20 and 30 students” have, like him, dropped out during the first year, on a class of 140 people.
Jeanne: “Increasing the number of places will accentuate the malaise”
“They lack the time and resources to supervise us properly. One nurse for three students is simply not possible”regrets Jeanne, who stopped Ifsi in the second year after an internship in a geriatrics department at the hospital. “The holders belittled us a lot, telling us that they have to watch over us like children. They wanted a workforce more than young people to train”adds the young woman.
“This internship is still offered to students, although many have complained about it. According to Ifsi, there is a lack of internship sites, so they cannot afford to withdraw it.”
While the Prime Minister announced on April 26 the creation of 2,000 additional places in the Ifsi, Jeanne believes that there are already too many students on the internship sites. “This will accentuate the malaise, because the internship conditions will still not be met to learn the job.she anticipates. We must first improve the quality of training so that students already in school do not give up.”
Salomé: “Every gesture on my part was criticized… I left after a week”
At the dawn of her third year of nursing school, Salomé had the click. “I knew that if I went all the way to the diploma, my mind and my body were not going to follow”she says, when she branched off to a school of osteopathy. “It allowed me to know what I liked and what I didn’t like in the medical field, what I look for in care. As a nurse, I felt like I was giving my gloves more than my time. It was assembly line work, three minutes per person, when today I have up to an hour”illustrates Salome.
In addition to a lack of“humanity” on the patient side, she says she suffered a malicious atmosphere in certain departments. “Every gesture on my part was criticized, in front or from behind. I left after a week”, she remembers about an internship in a specialized foster home. But she admits: for caregivers, “it’s not easy to frame”.
“The school does not explain to them how to train us. We see it in our internship reports, the nurses do not know how to fill it out.”
Today, she does not regret her choice of reorientation. The osteopath takes stock: “It’s still a very good job. I met some great people, saw close-knit teams and exceptional nurses. But I didn’t see enough to make me want to continue”.