Threats, harassment, verbal attacks, ordinary violence has taken hold over the years and in an insidious way in the hospital. As if the physical and moral suffering that caregivers have to heal every day was transformed into a dangerous virus in the services.
And future health personnel are on the front line of these epidemic outbreaks. Admittedly, this heavy climate experienced by interns, nursing students or midwives has not spoiled the air in all hospital corridors, but it contributes greatly to the malaise of the young shoots of medicine.
So to break the law of silence, a GP collected more than 130 testimonies of abuse. In a recently published book, Omerta in the hospital (ed. Michalon), Dr. Valérie Auslender is careful not to generalize these situations, but nevertheless underlines the importance of “mistreatment which is very serious” with “dramatic consequences in terms of health among students”.
This closed system, she describes at the microphone of Europe 1, gives rise to all abuses. The fear of the hierarchy and of reprisals, the need to validate one’s internship, take disoriented students in the pincers. But the authors of these pressures are not executioners. Many of them have been victims, but tradition has maintained the pyramid structure within the services. Reorganizations, downsizing, the culture of results and performance have done the rest.
