In the hospital, are the caregivers really healthy?

December 10, 2018.

The doctors, nurses and orderlies who work in the hospital are very often ill. Much more than the entire population. A study published on Monday returns to the reasons for this finding.

Healthcare professionals absent for 7.5 days in the past 12 months

The shoemakers are the worst shod, and it is now established that the caregivers are the most poorly cared for. This is in any case what emerges from an Odoxa study, published by Le Figaro this Monday, December 10. This panorama of the health of doctors, nurses, nursing assistants and other health personnel paints a gloomy picture of the state of hospital staff in France..

This study thus reveals that health professionals who work in a hospital environment are significantly sicker than the rest of the population. This is particularly true among nursing assistants and nurses, who are twice as sick as the rest of the population.. Respectively 49% and 42% of them declared an illness during the two months of the study. In all, and on average, hospital staff have taken 7.5 days of work over the past 12 months.

Are doctors the last to get the flu shot?

How to explain these figures? Undoubtedly by the proximity to many diseases, but not only. The figures indeed indicate that caregivers are not the first to respect their own prevention instructions.. A large number of them drink alcohol (1 in 10 drink it every day), smoke (22% of nurses smoke) and do not practice sports (56% of nursing assistants never exercise). sport).

They also do not seem to be concerned with the flu vaccination when the epidemic is announced. This study shows that 53% of caregivers do not get vaccinated. They are only 36% to do it every year while 16% do it from time to time. Many of them (18%) do not have an attending physician to prescribe them an influenza vaccine.

Gaelle Latour

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