According to a survey conducted by the main union of medical interns (ISNI), intern medical students work an average of 60 hours per week. This is 12 more than the European recommendation, which imposes a job 48-hour week maximum, and which was recalled to France in 2013.
A safety rest that is too little applied
In 20% of cases in general, and in 70% of cases in surgery, compulsory safety rest is not respected, protests the ISNI. In theory, an intern student should benefit from a safety rest of 11 hours after each night shift, in order to then be able to resume his work in full swing. form.
This non-compliance with the public health code would be maintained by the hospital doctors themselves, since in nearly 70% of cases, it is the department head who asks to put aside the safety rest.
In the 2012 ISNI survey, 15% of interns questioned admitted to having made medical errors the day after on call, due to lack of rest.
The interns are therefore sounding the alarm and asking for a reduction in their working time.
As for the guards, they also contribute to the tired interns, since they do an average of four instead of two per month. Obstetrics-gynecology, anesthesia-intensive care and surgery are the three areas where the number of on-call is the most important.
A complicated negotiation
For a year, this file has been supported by the Minister of Health Marisol Touraine,who had declared on October 26 that it was no longer acceptable that the interns were forced to work at mercy.
However, since that date, no consensus has been found during meetings between the ministry and representatives of interns. The ministry proposed to them to reduce the hospital obligations of interns from 11 to 10 half-days per week, and to introduce 15-minute breaks per half-day of work.
An insufficient, inapplicable and dangerous objective according to the ISNI, which deplores the “ministerial balancing act trying not to change anything on the working time of interns while trying to meet, on paper, the demands of Brussels. “
The interns would like, in addition to the passage from 11 to 10 half-days of weekly work from Monday to Friday, remuneration for any additional half-day of work, on Saturday morning in particular. Too great a budgetary and organizational impact for certain hospital authorities, who expressed their concerns to Marisol Touraine, in a letter sent at the end of October.
If nothing changes, “other longer mobilizations are to be expected in the coming weeks” warns Emmanuel Loeb, the president of ISNI, who fears an exodus of interns abroad in the coming years, for better working conditions.
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