The medical interns demonstrate in Paris so as not to exceed “48 hours per week”

A hundred people demonstrated, Saturday, June 19, in Paris to demand the limitation of the work of medical interns to 48 hours per week and to denounce their professional exhaustion.

Dressed in white coats, the demonstrators set off, shortly after 2 p.m., from the Pitié-Salpêtrière hospital to the Ministry of Health, at the call of the National Intersyndicale des Interns (ISNI). Some wore stickers “48 hours of strike for 48 hours per week. Hourly statement “ or signs “48 hours: exhausted interns, patients in danger! “.

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“We are doing forty-eight hours of strike, because it is the weekly limit of work in the law. After this limit, it becomes dangerous for caregivers, which can lead to burn-out, depression. We are also dangerous for patients. We barely stand up, impossible to make technical gestures ”, explained Gaétan Casanova, president of ISNI, stressing ” Professional exhaustion “.

“I work a lot, often a lot more than 48 hours a week. When I was in the pediatric emergency room, my record was ninety-two hours ”, said Pauline, 28, intern in Lille.

“During a call, one Sunday at 5 am, I was awakened when I had just gone to bed thirty minutes before. I didn’t have my eyes in front of the holes. A child came in for vomiting, I thought of gastro and I didn’t see the other symptoms, although he actually had acute hepatitis. It was then that I realized that I could be dangerous. This is proof that when you work for twenty-two hours you are a zombie. “

Read our decryption: The wear and tear of medical interns, on the front line

“Abusive assignments and blackmail of leaders”

“I want the situation of medical interns to improve. I have a daughter who committed suicide while taking medication after burnout ”, testified Laurence Marbach, who founded the association Lipseim (League for the health of students and interns in doctors) to do prevention.

The demonstrators also intended to denounce “The pressure, with abusive assignments and blackmail of the chiefs in relation to the diplomas”, explained Gaétan Casanova. “Some teachers go beyond their rights by asking for anything and everything. There is a very big pressure ”, added Carole Decaester, whose son Laurent committed suicide at the age of 30, after ten years of studying medicine.

A World Health Organization (WHO) study in May concluded that working fifty-five or more hours per week was associated with an estimated 35% increase in the risk of stroke and a 17% risk of dying from ischemic heart disease.

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The World with AFP