Lack of doctors, bed closures this summer ... Why caregivers are calling for a day of mobilization for the hospital

The CGT, Force Ouvrière, SUD and Unsa have filed joint notices to alert to the "catastrophic situation" in hospitals. The unions fear difficulties as the holidays approach.The conflict over pensions is over, that over the hospital is starting again. Four of the five main hospital unions are calling for a "national day of action" on Tuesday June 20. And unlike their last mobilizations in dispersed rows eight months ago, the health federations of the CGT, Force Ouvrière, SUD and Unsa have this time decided to file joint strike notices. 

In the short term first. Health services fear that the difficulties at the hospital will repeat themselves in July and August. "We are very, very worried on the eve of summer, when the population is increasing in Gironde, and with the approach of major events such as the Rugby World Cup and the Olympic Games", explains Gilbert Mouden, nurse-anesthetist at Bordeaux, interviewed by the Actu.fr site. For this carer, also a staff representative at the CHU, "the situation is more worrying than last year".“We have plenty of personnel officers who have made the decision to leave their jobs this year. And even if management has blocked departures between April 2023 and the end of September, recruitment will not follow for next year.

600 km away, Professor Frédéric Adnet, head of emergencies at the Avicenne hospital (Bobigny), also fears the worst. Hospital staff "will necessarily go on leave" during this period, he explains to TF1. Due to the vocations crisis in the sector, it will be difficult to replace them. According to him, "there will therefore be new closures linked to departures on vacation. Their number will be significant, greater than the reference year, in 2019, before Covid-19".

Loss of meaning and crisis of vocations
Difficult in this case to complete the schedules without closing beds, confirmed last May with franceinfo Jérôme Goeminne, director of the Cœur Grand Est group. Ditto at the GHT du Grand Cognac, where his colleague Julien Bilhaut estimates that he will have to do without 40 beds to guarantee patient safety. "I don't want to tinker, he justifies. I prefer to reduce the sails and give a course, to secure and reassure the staff, because the period is terribly anxiety-provoking."

In its joint press release, the intersyndicale speaks of employees who "can't take it anymore". "The loss of meaning is such that professionals flee, resign," she writes. She also claims that "80% of the national territory is a medical desert" and evokes "a state scandal". In the strike notice it filed, the Force Ouvrière union again denounces “the catastrophic situation of hospitals”."The medical and paramedical shortage is an assumed political choice, which accompanies the budgetary austerity maintained for years in a desire to dry up the public system to better undermine it."The four unions, which recently boycotted a meeting at the Ministry of Health on the subject of violence against caregivers (after the murder of a nurse in Reims), also intend to protest against the "denial of social dialogue" of the executive, explains Yann Le Baron, secretary general of the health branch of Unsa, interviewed by AFP.

Another strike scheduled for July 4
The tension in the hospital is likely to rise further on July 4. Three unions of hospital practitioners have already called for "a day of strike and action". "The public hospital is collapsing in whole sections", write the Hospital Medical Coordination (CMH), the National Intersyndicale of Hospital Practitioners (INPH) and the National Union of Physicians, Surgeons, Specialists, Biologists and Pharmacists in Public Hospitals ( SNAM-HP). According to them, the situation "has never been so serious" for this profession "which has become a real foil" both for young doctors "who no longer want to commit" to the hospital and for those "of all ages who are quitting more and more.

The three unions, which represent more than 40% of practitioners, and even 70% of university hospitals, also put pressure on the Ministry of Health by demanding "the immediate resumption of negotiations" suspended for a month. They demand in particular "a general increase in all remuneration to take inflation into account" as well as an "immediate revaluation" of night guards and on-call duty and