Going on strike is a balancing act for caregivers: it is a question of succeeding in putting pressure on decision-makers, without completely stopping to take care of patients.
Strike by liberal nurses, interns, emergency personnel, psychiatrists … Social movements among caregivers have multiplied in recent months, protesters demanding more means to carry out their activity, more staff and the revaluation of their professions . The liberal doctors are currently on strike, demanding in particular an increase in the price of the consultation.
But at the end of the year, the discontent of the medical staff aligns with a triple epidemic mixing bronchiolitis, flu and Covid-19, who fills emergencies.
“In this period of extreme difficulty for the health system”, the Minister of Health François Braun thus accused Wednesday of “particularly unwelcome” the current strike of the liberal doctors. “It’s not the right time,” he said.
As a doctor, “anyway it’s never the right time to strike”, underlines with BFMTV.com Jérôme Marty, general practitioner, president of the French Union for a free medicine.
The human issues linked to the nursing profession make it difficult to carry out social movements, because it is necessary to succeed in putting pressure on the decision-makers without however harming the patients.
The strike, “a solution of last resort”
Going on strike is clearly “not the primary vocation of the caregiver”, explains Rachel Bocher, psychiatrist, president of the national inter-union of hospital practitioners (INPH). A doctor on strike who ceases his activity, it is therefore patients who must turn to other medical responses and in this period of overload of hospital services, it is for example more difficult to find where to seek treatment.
“The means of the hospital are totally saturated and limited”, explained Wednesday on BFMTV Bruno Mégarbane, head of the intensive care unit at Lariboisière hospital (Paris). “Our ability to react is extremely weak, very quickly we are overwhelmed and we have to take care of patients in a sub-optimal way”.
The caregivers on strike today are obviously aware of this tense situation. The strike is an action used as a “last resort”, when the profession can no longer make itself heard and is reaching the end of its possibilities, assures Rachel Bocher.
“It’s hopeless to come to close the practices to put the pressure”, also launched Tuesday on BFMTV Jean-Paul Hamon, general practitioner on strike.
“It’s very difficult, particularly delicate”, abounds with BFMTV.com Cyrille Venet, hospital doctor, general secretary of the national union of hospital doctors – Force Ouvrière (SNMH-FO), for whom the strike is also only a “last resort”.
“A vital emergency, of course we will take it”
A minimum service remains guaranteed anyway, even in the event of a strike, because “if all public hospital workers have the right to strike”, the State “has the possibility of assigning us”, explains Jean-François Cibien, emergency doctor, president of the inter-union Action practitioner hospital. This requisition of personnel allows the company not to find itself in a situation where a seriously ill patient would find closed doors at the hospital, although for the caregivers interviewed, the current situation, without a strike, is already dramatic.
“This summer people spent 10 days on stretchers,” says the emergency doctor, who points out that there are lost chances for patients in these conditions.
Faced with the strike of liberal doctors, some of them “have already been requisitioned”, explained Wednesday on RMC Noëlle Cariclet, psychiatrist on strike and spokesperson for the collective “Doctors for tomorrow”. “It’s normal you have to be able to maintain the continuity of care on the territory, it’s the game, and the doctors who have been requisitioned have not complained (…) they are happy to be able to lend a hand to the services emergency”.
Concretely, being on strike does not mean that patients are rejected, “we are not unconscious”, says Jérôme Marty. “We don’t have doctors who let someone die in front of them”, also launches Cyrille Venet.
“If we have a vital emergency, obviously we will take it”, abounds Jean-François Cibien.
Some only strike for an hour for the symbol, or support the movement without actually going on strike, because they are in an area of medical desert. At the hospital, it happens that caregivers claiming to be on strike come to work but wear a message or an armband to signify that they are joining the protest movement. “I was on duty on Christmas Day myself,” explains Jérôme Marty.
“A watchword to express the gravity of the situation”
In this sense, for caregivers, a strike represents rather a symbolic means of expressing themselves. It is not a question of completely stopping treatment, but “of alerting users to the situation of the medical community in France”, explains Rachel Bocher, of telling patients that the degraded situation of care for months is not not the fault of the staff, and to the authorities that the state of things must change.
“It’s a watchword to express the seriousness of the situation”, summarizes Cyrille Venet, who recognizes that striking for a doctor remains “an almost insoluble problem”.
The current strike of liberal doctors still has an impact and overloads other sectors. But for the strikers, the situation makes ongoing social movements necessary, because working conditions are deteriorating, staff are exhausted and patients are less and less well taken care of.
Faced with this state of affairs, “it is our responsibility to do something”, supports Jérôme Marty who speaks of a “collapse of the health system, we have been made abusive” and “we no longer want to be accomplices in this system”.
“Many [de soignants] left recently” also recalls Rachel Bocher, who explains that in psychiatry, as elsewhere, “the organization of care no longer corresponds to our values, there is a loss of meaning”. The psychiatrist ensures that in places, for lack of means “we treat badly” and that there is a real “situation of human suffering in the profession”.
Jean-François Cibien vehemently denounces the current situation. “Today there is a real burnout of personnel, there is students leaving their training“, he laments. So “I prefer that they go on strike rather than having carloads of people leaving the profession”.
