Dince the dawn of time, women have accompanied other women in giving birth. With the advent of modern medicine, midwives have remained at the center of the care pathway for parturients.
Since the boarding school reform in 1985, over the years they have also taken a central place in sexual health, gradually filling the lack of city gynecologists that the reform created. While the liberal installation of midwives was a second life after years in the birth room, more and more midwives are setting up in practice as soon as they leave the training and research unit (UFR) of maieutics.
It is a fact, and the charge against Israel Nisand, who evoked this reality in a tribune at the Worldseems excessive to us, because the professor’s statement is, for us, midwives and maternity obstetricians, only a cry of alarm in the face of this reality that we all see.
For the past two years, our services have had the greatest difficulty in finding replacements during the holidays. This summer proved to be particularly difficult with the temporary closure of certain structures, while others continued to monitor and give birth to women in degraded mode.
“The profession of maternity midwife is a difficult and demanding profession, the remuneration of which is disproportionate to the assumption of responsibility and the difficulty”
Each guard in degraded mode is a source of stress, of endangering others and pushes midwives a little more to flee maternities for exercise in town. Is it “paternalism” to underline this reality? Our maternities are suffering, the midwives who continue to alternate days, nights and weekends to ensure the continuity of care are suffering!
So perhaps we should analyze the causes of this “great resignation” and set up a reflection to respond to this problem. The latter is both specific to the profession, and in particular to its remuneration conditions, but is also a societal, generational and economic problem.
The profession of maternity midwife is a difficult and demanding profession, the remuneration of which is disproportionate to the assumption of responsibility and the difficulty of the day/night alternations of the schedules. The salaries of midwives have been increased following the pandemic, but not enough to retain them in hospital structures.
If midwives are increasingly turning to self-employment, it is not to earn more but to seek a balance between work and private life, with a slider that leans more and more towards the well-being, following the example of the movement that we observe in the rest of society. This movement will continue to grow and maternity work will never be able to eliminate nights, weekends, stress or restrictive schedules…
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