“It’s a job that I loved, but I don’t see why I would continue to accept being mistreated.” Manon Lefort, 27, quit nursing last July, just four years after she started. Though she’s early in her career, the young Ella tells BFMTV.com that she “couldn’t take it anymore.”
“It’s unfortunate, because basically I did this job with passion,” explains who worked for two years in different departments of a Toulouse clinic, then as a home hospitalization nurse (HAV) in the Gers. “But I quickly became disillusioned. In fact, we are constantly under pressure, running from right to left, sacrificing our Christmases, our New Years, our personal lives due to staggered hours, overtime and last minute calls,” she said.
60,000 job vacancies in France
At the clinic where Manon Lefort practiced, she was called on regularly by her superiors to fill in planning gaps caused by a growing caregiver shortage. “They forced me to chain 5 days of 12 hours in a row, to do nights because so-and-so was missing. And they make us understand that we have no other option”, says the young woman. Exhausted by the pace and the workload, the lack of means and the recognition of her, Manon Lefort undertook a professional retraining last spring. She now she plans to work in the sale of household appliances in the Gers.
“I got to a point where I was going to work wondering what I was doing there. My life was to be shouted by doctors, executives, patients. We spend our days taking care of people but nobody cares about us, for our sake. -being”.
And she is far from the only one to be “at the end of the line”. Since the Covid crisis, white coats have been fleeing hospital services. A study conducted in May 2021 by the Order of Nurses revealed that 4 out of 10 nurses wanted to change jobs. Thierry Amouroux, of the National Union of Nurses, explained in June to the newspaper The world that 60,000 nursing posts were currently vacant in France.
fast paced services
“By squeezing the lemon, it has run out of juice,” also laments Élodie Vaur, a 2017 graduate, who told BFMTV.com that she had noticed “an immense malaise” within the profession. “Of the 80 former students of my promotion, about twenty already wanted to leave the profession 5 years later”, she testifies. This 29-year-old nurse, who worked in a clinic in Neuilly-sur-Seine, embarked on a new online training course a year ago, a BTS to become a dietitian.
“Talking about our working conditions is less taboo today,” greets this resident of Yvelines, who acts as a link with the beginnings of the profession.
“In the time of the nuns, the care of the other was a sacred vocation for which they sacrificed their lives. But we are no longer. Generations change, and some dare to say that they no longer want to sacrifice their lives for a profession where they have no recognition, and that is quite understandable, ”she develops.
Charlotte Kerbat, a 29-year-old former nurse who graduated in 2014, also converted after the first wave of covid. “I knew pretty quickly, like many, that I wouldn’t do this job my whole life, not under these conditions,” recalls the former caretaker. Today, far from the hospital, this Brest resident has no regrets. She savors the fact that she has found “a healthy balance and a normal life”: “I am no longer permanently tired, my back is no longer loose from carts that are too heavy”, this Breton woman rejoices.
In 2020, she created Charlotte K., a site that supports more than a thousand nurses in their professional recycling project. To date, the fifteen coaches with whom she works have already helped more than a thousand nurses in distress, “squeezed” by the profession, to change their lives. A site whose dazzling success is emblematic of the malaise that reigns in the profession.
“Not in these conditions”
“It is very worrying for the future,” says the former nurse interviewed by BFMTV.com. “90% of the people we accompany tell us the same thing: they don’t give up because they don’t like their work or because there was a casting mistake. They all love their work sincerely!”, he insists, “but I no longer want to exercise it in these conditions”.
In these types of cases, Charlotte Kerbat informs them about other ways of practicing nursing, reminding them that it is also possible to work in advanced practice, in the company, at school or in CPAM, for example. . “But sometimes (this is still rare) some prefer to completely change the sector and resort to physiotherapy, open their business, design architects,” explains the young woman.
On Tuesday, Health Minister François Braun said he was sorry the flight of white coats started at school. In the nursing training institutes (Ifsi), which integrate more than 30,000 new students each year, “approximately 20% drop out” during the three-year career. This phenomenon “really worries me a lot,” he added, pointing to “mistreatment in internships.”
“For their first internship, in the first year, they’re going to find themselves in nursing homes or geriatrics, it’s almost systematic,” she said, but “because they don’t have nursing skills, we say ‘we’re short on caregivers, so you’re going to clean the bathroom’, and on top of that they yell at them,” he said.
Disgusted students and young graduates
In fact, this is what Fleur, a young graduate, experienced during her last two internships at a Lille hospital. “The hospital completely disgusted me,” says the 24-year-old, who did not expect such an “electric” and “deleterious” environment. “At school they sell us that the hospital is the best because it is the most educational, but above all I have the impression that it is destructive.”
“The nurses on the job regularly break in front of us, there is an incredible amount of sick leave,” he develops. A frenetic pace that, according to the former student, “created a malicious atmosphere among classmates.” “As young graduates, we are judged very quickly”, continues the young woman, who now plans to privilege other structures in the hospital. “I will do my best to resort to medico-social services, nursing homes or home hospitalization,” promises the woman from Lille.
She explained that in sortant of their daily service (or they effectuait a seule replacement for 30 patients), she is épuisée à la tâche au point de “ne pas se souvenir des 3/4 de ce qui s’était passé dans the day”. “We have our heads on the handlebars, we keep going, it is physically and morally exhausting, so much so that we are afraid of making mistakes.”
Source: BFM TV
