With the hashtag #CodeRouge, the ANESF Association of Midwifery Students is alerting. According to a survey conducted from March to April 2018 in France among 4,000 of their students, seven out of ten of them suffer from depression. The midwives in the making who answered the questionnaires (2,430 people) denounce a lack of consideration, as well as too much gynecological violence. Presented this Wednesday, December 5 at a press conference, these results are relayed by Franceinfo.
41% of midwifery students believe that their health is “degraded” to “strongly degraded”#RedCode
– ANESF (@Anesf_FR) December 5, 2018
A heavy lack of consideration
After medical students, who were almost one in two at risk of burnout, it is therefore around midwifery students to show their discomfort: 60% point to internships in hospitals or clinics, which can go very badly in particular because of the lack of consideration of the hierarchical superiors. Anaïs, a fourth year student in Paris, testifies. After ten internships to her credit, she admits having the impression of being invisible in the eyes of the holders who sometimes do not even remember her first name, she says, quoted by Franceinfo.
“This mistreatment is not tolerable within training structures, hospitals and the liberal sector. Benevolence must take precedence”
-Christine Etchmendigaray, Director of the Mayeutical Department at UVSQ-
– ANESF (@Anesf_FR) December 5, 2018
Witnesses of shocking scenes
Student midwives also face physical violence, which they witness firsthand. Mélanie, also a fourth year student, remembers a difficult episode. During a delivery where the patient had not had an epidural and after an episiotomy and the use of already painful forceps, the doctor wanted to perform a uterine revision without anesthesia. An operation that causes severe pain, for which the midwives called him to order.
These students have no one to turn to in case they witness these shocking scenes. They do not have any internship supervisor. A referent that the ANESF is now demanding: it would be a question of creating a status of professional tutor, who can – as for medical or pharmacy students – support them during their internship.
We ask for the establishment of the status of internship supervisor so that students are better supervised during the internship. #RedCode
– ANESF (@Anesf_FR) December 5, 2018
Read also :
- Midwives: 73 countries are sorely lacking
- An information campaign on the role of midwives
