Liberal nurses on strike Tuesday to demand pay increases (AFP / LOIC VENANCE)
To talk about her job, Sabine Gentilini likes to compare herself to a bee: “I sting people and I work all the time, until bedtime,” laughs (yellow) this 54-year-old liberal nurse, on strike Tuesday at the call of several trade unions.
Driving her Peugeot since 7:00 a.m., she goes back and forth between around twenty patients living in the Compiègne countryside (Oise), her office and the laboratory.
“I get +drunk+ at the end of the day, I wonder where I am,” whispers the nurse, her gaze wandering between the narrow road and her schedule, detailed down to the minute until 8:00 p.m.
Blood test, medication distribution, infusion… In a few precise gestures, she provides home care, the basic remuneration of which has stagnated since 2009 despite inflation – a source of anger in the profession which is demanding increases.
Her income has collapsed to 1,500 euros per month, she assures, half as much as in 2019, while her working weeks still fluctuate between 60 and 70 hours.
She complains of compensation that is too low for her hundred kilometers daily, despite a recent increase of 25 cents per trip (to 2.75 euros), and charges which now absorb more than half of her income.
– Colleague attacked –
Her visits to homes, sometimes suddenly, are “not palpable but extremely important”, she explains, on a medical but also social level.
Her patients praise her presence and her energy, like Désiré, 81 years old, diagnosed with Parkinson’s, whom she visits every day to install his medication pump, in Thourotte (Oise). A device that allows him to continue practicing his passion, drawing.
“It becomes a friendly relationship, like someone you live with,” says the retiree, who sometimes offers sweets to his nurse.
“Before, we had special contact with the doctor. Now, it is the nurses, like Sabine, who have replaced him,” says Huguette, 88 years old, her face bruised by a fall, during a visit to her home, also in Thourotte.
After 26 years of career, Sabine Gentilini combines muscular fatigue, sleep problems and “weariness” in the face of administrative tasks and the distress of certain patients.
Recently, a disgruntled patient physically assaulted a colleague in his office. “Disturbed” since then, Ms. Gentilini notes that “people are demanding more and more from us”.
So much so that she is considering leaving the profession when she turns 60, seven years before her planned retirement age.
– “Not like this” –
“At this rate, I will have a stroke or heart attack before the age of 60,” estimates his colleague Christophe Auger, 48, based near Beauvais and “constantly stressed.”
When he started, almost 20 years ago, he could financially afford breaks of several days. Today, he has had to take a salaried job in Paris, in ambulance transport, to supplement his income from his freelance activity.
He also criticizes the increase in costs, especially those of his office where he only carries out 2% of his consultations but which he is legally obliged to keep in order to practice.
“It’s a 1,000 euro note that goes in the trash every month,” he laments, even though he already spends 500 euros per month on fuel.
In the name of profitability, some give up providing care, like Laure Bocquillon, 46 years old.
Regrettably, this nurse who works in the North was unable to provide palliative care to an acquaintance “because it was going to take too long for a lousy package”.
Remuneration is also too low for blood tests and injections, paid between 3 and 6 euros gross (not including travel allowances). This nurse does not hesitate, however, to perform free acts in an emergency, for example if a patient calls her, without a prescription, to apply a dressing.
“I have come to look at the financial aspect before the human aspect, even though I am not like that. But the image of the ‘kind and good’ nurse is no longer possible.”