Strike by liberal nurses, interns, emergency personnel, psychiatrists… Social movements among caregivers have multiplied in recent months, protesters are demanding more means to carry out their activity, more personnel, and the revaluation of their professions. The liberal doctors are currently on strike, demanding in particular an increase in the price of the consultation.
But at the end of the year, the discontent of medical personnel is aligned with a triple epidemic that mixes bronchiolitis, flu and Covid-19. who fills emergencies.
“In this period of extreme difficulty for the health system,” Health Minister François Braun accused Wednesday of “particularly untimely” the current strike by liberal doctors. “It’s not the right time,” he said.
As a doctor, “it’s never the right time to go on strike anyway,” Jérôme Marty, a general practitioner and president of the French Union for Free Medicine, told BFMTV.com.
The human issues related to the nursing profession make it difficult to carry out social movements, since it is necessary to pressure decision-makers without, however, harming patients.
The strike, “a solution of last resort”
Being on strike is clearly “not the main vocation of the caregiver,” explains Rachel Bocher, psychiatrist, president of the National Inter-Union of Hospital Doctors (INPH). A striking doctor who ceases his activity, therefore, it is the patients who must resort to other medical responses and in this period of overload of hospital services, for example, it is more difficult to find where to seek treatment.
“The hospital’s media are totally saturated and limited,” explained Bruno Mégarbane, head of the intensive care unit at the Lariboisière hospital (Paris), on BFMTV on Wednesday. “Our reaction capacity is extremely weak, we get overwhelmed very quickly and we have to care for patients in a suboptimal way.”
The carers on strike today are obviously aware of this tense situation. The strike is an action used as a “last resort”, when the profession can no longer make itself heard and is reaching the end of its possibilities, says Rachel Bocher.
“It is useless to come to close the practices to put pressure on,” Jean-Paul Hamon, a general practitioner on strike, also launched Tuesday on BFMTV.
“It is very difficult, particularly delicate”, abounds on BFMTV.com Cyrille Venet, a hospital doctor, general secretary of the national union of hospital doctors – Force Ouvrière (SNMH-FO), for whom the strike is also only a “last resort “. .
“A vital emergency, of course we will attend to it”
In any case, a minimum service is guaranteed, even in the event of a strike, because “if all public hospital workers have the right to strike”, the State “has the possibility of assigning us”, explains Jean-François Cibien, emergency doctor, president of the inter-union Action practicing hospital. This requisition of personnel allows the company not to find itself in a situation in which a seriously ill patient is behind closed doors in the hospital, although for the caregivers interviewed the current situation, without a strike, is already dramatic.
“This summer people were on a stretcher for 10 days,” says the emergency doctor, who points out that there are lost opportunities for patients in these conditions.
Before the strike of liberal doctors, some of them “have already been requisitioned”, explained on Wednesday at RMC Noëlle Cariclet, psychiatrist on strike and spokesperson for the “Doctors of Tomorrow” collective. “It is normal, you have to be able to maintain continuity of care in the territory, it is the game, and the doctors who have been seized have not complained (…) they are happy to be able to lend a hand to the emergency services.”
Specifically, being on strike does not mean that patients are turned away, “we are not unconscious”, says Jérôme Marty. “We don’t have doctors who let someone die in front of them,” Cyrille Venet also launches.
“If we have a vital emergency, obviously we will take it”, Jean-François Cibien abounds.
Some only go on strike for an hour because of the symbol, or support the movement without going on strike, because they are in a desert medical area. At the hospital, it happens that caregivers who say they are on strike come to work but wear a message or a bracelet to indicate that they are joining the protest movement. “I myself was on duty on Christmas day,” explains Jérôme Marty.
“A slogan to express the seriousness of the situation”
In this sense, for caregivers, a strike represents more of a symbolic means of expression. It is not a question of completely suspending treatment, but “of alerting users to the situation of the medical community in France”, explains Rachel Bocher, of telling patients that the degraded situation of care for months is not the fault of the staff. and to the authorities that things have to change.
“It is a slogan to express the seriousness of the situation”, summarizes Cyrille Venet, who acknowledges that for a doctor the strike continues to be “an almost insoluble problem”.
The current strike by liberal doctors still has an impact and overloads other sectors. But for the strikers, the situation makes continuous social movements necessary, as working conditions are deteriorating, staff are exhausted and patients are underserved.
Faced with this state of affairs, “it is our responsibility to do something”, says Jérôme Marty who speaks of a “collapse of the health system, they have made us abusers” and “we no longer want to be accomplices of this system”. .
“Many [de soignants] recently left”, recalls Rachel Bocher, who explains that in psychiatry, as in other places, “the organization of care no longer corresponds to our values, there is a loss of meaning”. The psychiatrist assures that in some places, for lack of means “we treat badly” and that there is a true “situation of human suffering in the profession”.
Jean-François Cibien vehemently denounces the current situation. “Today there is a real attrition of personnel, there is students leaving their training“, he laments, so “I prefer that they go on strike than that there are cars full of people who leave the profession.”
Source: BFM TV
