More and more nursing students are abandoning their studies and denouncing in particular “exhaustion” during their first steps in professional life.
More and more of them are giving up. 14% of nursing students abandon their training along the way, and most do so from the first year (10% in 2021), according to the results of a study by the Department of Research, Studies, evaluation and statistics (Dress). The dropout rate has never been so high, it is three times more than ten years ago.
>> Health: three times more nursing students drop out of first year in 2021 than in 2011
These “dropout” students point to poorly supervised and poorly paid internships. This is a training “mistreating” confides Louis, a second-year student in Tours. He stopped his studies at the end of February: “I was exhausted, stressed out from the internships, disgusted with what I saw against me or against the patients. Everyone is exhausted. I thought we were going to be well received, we are the next generation, we are the caregivers of tomorrow and in fact, we are full of it.”
“Aberrant” remuneration
“We are asked to do things that we have never seen or that we do not know how to do, as if we had to know everything and already be a nurse in fact. In addition, we are paid around 1.50 euros in time”laments the former student. “I find it a little absurd that we are paid so little. So I work weekends and holidays. I work all the time. Frankly, when I stopped, I was tired.”
“I was exhausted, I couldn’t take it anymore. We wonder how we can treat patients well when we ourselves are at the end of our rope. And I said to myself, I don’t want to to harm patients because we don’t give the conditions to treat patients well.”
Louis, dropout nursing studentat franceinfo
Students and nursing professionals mobilize on Friday with an “All in black” day to demand “concrete solutions” to the government. Contacted by franceinfo, the office of the Minister of Health, François Braun, made known its desire to “advancing training”, to rebuild, transform the nursing profession. Consultations begin Thursday, May 11. Thirty nurses will be received at the ministry.