At the Brest University Hospital, the anesthetists demand strict compliance with the European directive on working time. Faced with 70-hour weeks, they filed a strike notice.
Things are heating up between the doctors at the Brest – Cavale Blanche CHU and their management. In a press release published this Sunday, the National Union of Hospital Anesthesiologists
One third of vacant anesthesia positions
The situation is such that at present, 10 positions are vacant out of a total staff of 32. Two interim anesthesiologists therefore intervene every day to compensate for the shortages of staff. But this organization is no longer tenable, according to the union. Doctors in office complain of carrying out additional time beyond the 48 hours per week “with compensation much lower than the remuneration of temporary workers. They must also regularly give up their leave, ”adds SNPHAR-E. As a result, these hospital practitioners (PH) work 60 to 70 hours each week. Exhausted, several anesthetists would even consider leaving the hospital quickly, says the union.
48 hours and no more
Faced with this drift, these PH demand “strict compliance” with the European directive on working time “which applies to all European employees”, they recall. They want the workforce calculations for the sizing of the teams to be based on a weekly shift work (with patients) of 44 hours in order to have a little time to carry out so-called non-clinical tasks (teaching, research, etc. organization, …). In theory, they are part of the normal work of any hospital doctor, in particular in CHU.
For its part, management only offers them a shift activity of 48 hours per week, thus transforming an upper limit into normal working time. In short, an irresolvable problem for the moment …
Side effects on patients
“It is a high-risk policy, the consequences of which could lead to medical desertification in this specialty with necessarily collateral effects on patients”, conclude these trade unionists. On this subject, a few miscellaneous facts recently enamelled the reputation of the establishment. Following the ordeal that she would have lived there in the emergency room with her 65-year-old aunt, Vanessa Douguet sent an open letter to this hospital last March, which was shared by nearly 19,000 Internet users on the social network Facebook.
And a month earlier, an 89-year-old man had died on a stretcher in a hallway, awaiting treatment. In this context of sharp tensions, the staff already demanded at the time better reception conditions, patient care and staff work. A walkout and a demonstration had even taken place on the site.
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