Strasbourg hospital staff call for demonstrations on Saturday March 19 at 3 p.m., Place Kléber to denounce “the planned death of the public hospital”. Doctor Floriane Zeyons, co-organizer of the movement, answers our questions.
The staff of Strasbourg university hospitals want to make their anger heard. After three months of homage to the public hospital in a state of “programmed death”, they do not have the impression of having been heard.
Despite Jean Castex’s announcements in December, caregivers deplore constantly deteriorating working conditions. This is why they decided to demonstrate, calling on the population to take part in the march for health, on Saturday March 19 at 3 p.m., place Kléber.
Floriane Zeyons, cardiologist at the New Civil Hospital, returns for France 3 Alsace to all the reasons which push doctors, nursing assistants and non-medical staff to demonstrate.
After the weekly minute of silence launched three months ago, why are you switching to another mode of action?
“It’s complementary. The minute of silence was set up on December 10, the day of Jean Castex’s visit to Strasbourg. Despite his announcement of 20 million euros of investment, we thought that he It was no longer possible to do nothing and just watch the boat sink. The minute of silence on Friday was a way to bring people together and see that we were all affected by this situation”.
“This action was easy to set up within the hospital. It had a certain impact in the sense that it extended to the rest of Alsace and elsewhere in France. It made it possible to create cohesion in the different layers of the hospital and to realize that the evil was systemic. But the action remained confidential because very little was covered in the media at the national level. Hence the need to move on to a mode of action more visible which is manifestation”.
What is the agony of the hospital that you denounce?
“The current situation is unheard of. To take a telling example, at the HUS (University Hospitals of Strasbourg), 150 to 200 nursing positions are vacant. I can’t even find the staff needed to fill the positions that already exist. The other professions in the hospital are also affected: in my department, in cardiology, there are unfilled doctor’s positions, the same thing for assistants -nursing staff and non-nursing staff as well as secretaries and laboratory technicians. All departments are affected. There is a massive flight of hospital staff, nursing and non-nursing staff. This creates a problem for patients and staff still here.”
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“The workload remains the same regardless of the workforce, it does not decrease if there are fewer of us. We have fewer beds but as many, even more patients. The population is aging, with more serious pathologies. light patients go to clinics because they are profitable procedures. Public hospitals find themselves with patients with much heavier pathologies, while having the objective of going ever faster. Everyone has the impression of doing a bad job, with the constant pressure to do what is most urgent.”
Did the Ségur de la santé change anything?
“Ségur has brought positive things. There has been a salary increase, in particular for nursing staff, around 183 euros. These measures were expected. But what makes hospital staff leave is not the salary, it is are the working conditions.
What are you asking?
“We need a massive attractiveness plan. The fee-for-service pricing system, a 60% method of financing hospitals, has catastrophic perverse effects. This means that hospitals, in chronic deficit, have to increase their activities, to work more. As a result, the price of acts is revised downwards since there is not the money to pay for them. We must get out of this system and allocate budgets to hospitals that are adapted to the population pool and to the socio-economic context. We ask to have sufficient basic staff, then possibly hiring to have a more favorable staff-patient ratio.”
“In my department, in cardiology when I started, there were two nursing assistants and two nurses during the day for 23 patients, with less serious pathologies than today. With heavier patients, it is not more manageable. These are issues to be dealt with in each department, so that nurses no longer have to prioritize or neglect patients. When you are told: you are offered 200 euros more per month but you still will not be able to looking in the mirror at night is what makes you leave. Beyond a certain threshold of lack of staff, hiring becomes difficult, because working conditions become more and more prohibitive.”
Who will go to the demonstration?
“We expect a lot of people from the hospital. But the general public is invited to participate, a bit like the marches for the climate which concern everyone. The hospital is a public good, a fundamental pillar of our republic and we don’t want it to go away. You clapped during the pandemic at your windows, there it’s the same thing: you used your hands and now use your feet to show your support.”
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