The number of nursing students is increasing… but so is the dropout rate. The Drees, the studies department of the Ministry of Health, published this Thursday a study on dropouts in nursing training between 2011 and 2021. The finding is clear: while in 2011, 3% of female students in nursing training drop out of these studies in their first year, this rate rises to 10% in 2021.
The number of dropouts is particularly high in the first year, but the phenomenon affects the three years of study. “Of all the schooling of the promotion that enters in 2018, 14% of the students have abandoned their studies, that is, 3 points more than for the promotion of 2011”, also underlines the Drees.
Men only made up 13% of the class of 2021, “but they more often drop out of their workouts during school,” the Drees says. The study points out that the increase in the dropout rate also affects the training of nursing assistants, medical electroradiology handlers or even pedicurists-podiatrists, but it has “remained stable for masseurs-physiotherapists and midwives”.
A “degradation of training conditions”
The National Federation of Nursing Students (Fnesi) judges that this increase in the dropout rate is explained by “a deterioration in training conditions.” During internships, students face a “lack of supervision sometimes amounting to bullying”, with nursing staff lacking the means and therefore the time to care for the students, he told BFMTV. .com.
The Fnesi denounces a “theoretical training that does not respond to the needs on the ground” and calls for a new training reference system. The federation also deplores the precariousness of nursing students, with internship scholarships of 36 euros a week for the first year, 46 euros for the second year and 60 euros for the third.
In January, Health Minister François Braun said he refused to “resolve that so many nursing students drop out.” He said that he wanted to work on “ensuring the courses and the quality of life of the students.” To this end, the minister mentioned “the integration of tutoring in training before the start of the school year in September, the promotion and better recognition of tutoring, and the more dynamic deployment of systems such as courses arranged for success.”
Changes in the Parcoursup procedure?
François Braun also announced “proposals for the fall” on the procedure at Parcoursup. Nursing training at Ifsi has been offered on the Parcoursup platform since 2019, while until then it was the subject of a competition.
Result: “Since 2019, the number of students in the first year of nursing training increased sharply to reach almost 35,500 in 2021, after remaining generally stable in the 2010s, around 31,000,” according to Drees.
But the Fnesi is not in favor of a change in the Parcoursup procedure for nursing studies and believes that there is a “guidance problem for high school students in general.” She called for a day of mobilization this Friday “to deplore a health system that no longer meets expectations.”
Source: BFM TV
