The diagnosis is confirmed month after month. Since the release of the most critical phase of the Covid-19 epidemic, the hospital has been going through another crisis. Closures of beds in many medical departments, emergencies in extreme tension forced to operate in degraded mode, operating theaters that are idling… Impossible to resume an activity “normal”. With this same phenomenon observed in many health establishments for almost a year now: a shortage of staff, made all the more acute as summer is always a difficult period in terms of human resources. First among nurses, but also among doctors. “We must stop the bleeding at the hospital”said the new Minister of Health and emergency physician, François Braun, in an interview with the Parisian, July 17.
Why this recruitment crisis? The violence of the epidemic waves which have swept over the hospital and exhausted the caregivers for almost two years, causing its share of departures or retrainings, does not explain everything. Nor medical demography, insufficient to meet health needs for several years in many territories. The evil is deeper, to hear the actors of health: the public hospital has especially lost its attractiveness.
A question that goes beyond that of remuneration
The issue is far from being limited to remuneration in health establishments: if unanimity prevails in denouncing their level which is still far too low, in particular among paramedics (nurses, nursing assistants, etc.), the increase in salaries of the plan government of Ségur de la santé in the summer of 2020 did not make it possible to attract more, or even to retain staff. The leak continued.
“We have always earned less money in the hospital than in the private sector, recalls Thierry Godeau, doctor in La Rochelle at the head of the conference of presidents of the medical commission of hospital establishments. But there was a set of things that made up for it: the technical platform, research and teaching, innovation, teamwork… All of that fell apart with budgetary restrictions, certain laws, vacant positions, the explosion in working time and the burden of care. »
And to put forward a personal anecdote to confirm his analysis: like him and his wife, his two daughters studied medicine, but at the age to embark on a career… none of them stays in the hospital, unlike their two parents. “They don’t want the life we hadhe believes. We cannot attract young people, but also less young people, without a future perspective, and the hospital no longer has a project. »
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