Understaffed and Overworked: The Challenges Faced by Public Hospitals, as Seen at Grenoble University Hospital in France

Lack of staff, recruitment difficulties, work overload and patient care problems: the public hospital is under pressure. Example at the Grenoble University Hospital. France 3 Alpes gives the floor to health professionals and legislators to discuss the solutions to be provided urgently.

Overwhelmed emergencies, burnt-out nurses, lack of arms, hospitals are under pressure and face a chronic lack of human resources. This is particularly the case at the Center Hospitalier Universitaire Grenoble Alpes (CHUGA).

“There is such a shortage that it is up to you to do everything”testifies Thibault Steinmetz, spokesperson for the association of interns in medicine in Grenoble, on the set of Sunday in Politics, a program broadcast this May 14 at 11:25 am on France 3 Alpes.

“There are interns who work 90 to 110 hours a week in Grenoble and they are interns who have to push patients onto stretchers because there are not enough stretcher bearers available”he says.

“Normally, interns are supposed to be 80% of their time in the hospital, and 20% of their time is training. It is non-existent, there are only 6% of interns at CHUGA who have access to their 20% training time”, continues Thibault Steinmetz. This leads to bewildering situations.

“This is going to translate very concretely into a surgical intern who is going to do an operating procedure for the first time on a patient without having ever done it before, without having a senior next to him and sometimes with phrases like ‘I will come to help you, only if I see the blood flowing under the door of my office'”deplores the spokesperson for the association of medical interns in Grenoble.

Interviewed recently by France 3 Alpes, the management of the CHU recognized these difficulties, especially in emergencies. “We have a 50% unfilled vacancies rate. This means that we are shooting with only half the workforce. It is not a problem of financial means since we have the positions but we cannot find enough emergency physicians“, explained Monique Sorrentino, the director general of the CHU Grenoble-Alpes.

What can be done, then, to compensate for this lack of staff and improve the quality of patient care? For several weeks, the CHU has launched a vast communication campaign and even a job-dating, this Thursday, to recruit 400 people, including 230 nursing positions.

For Yannick Neuder, deputy Les Républicains de l’Isère and cardiologist at CHUGA, “We need to train more health personnel. We have a selection process that is no longer up to date since we have an aging population”he argues.

“We have gone from a numerus clausus to a numerus apertus but we are completely crazy, particularly in France. The health, medical and paramedical professions are the most requested choices in Parcoursup. But we are crazy enough in the country to generally discourage and disgust 90% of our youth who decide to enter the health professions through completely stupid competitions, numbers, things like that, when it would be enough to set up exams to validate if you have the level or not”believes the parliamentarian.

François Blanchardon is a member of the regional committee of France Assos Santé, a benchmark organization in the defense of patients and healthcare users. For him, the urgency is first of all to organize a “delegation of tasks”.

“We have to bring doctors and patients together and ask ourselves what solutions we can provide now, perhaps some will not be sustainable. But doctors should be freed from certain tasks: follow-ups, redo prescriptions”, says François Blanchardon.

A draft law, currently under consideration in parliament, goes in this direction. The text provides for simplifying patient access to physiotherapists, nurses in advanced practice and speech therapists to relieve general practitioners.

The Rist law has capped the salaries of interim doctors called in for replacements, particularly in emergencies.

For Thibault Steinmetz, the solution lies above all in remuneration, to retain and recognize the work of healthcare professionals in the hospital.

“I was still talking to an intern today: they finish every evening at 10 p.m. in his service and it does not cause anyone a problem that the interns, being fewer in number, end at 10 p.m., overtime is not counted, it is not not paid anyway, the regulations do not provide for it”regrets the spokesperson for the association of medical interns in Grenoble.

“I think it is urgent to stop accepting that the French healthcare system and in particular the hospital system works on this completely bewildering voluntary basis”he adds.

Because reduced to the number of hours of work, the 30,000 interns in France actually earn less than 6 euros per hour on average.

If I do call duty in the emergency room, I get paid less than someone on the minimum wage

Thibault Steinmetz

spokesperson for the association of interns in medicine in Grenoble

“Me, as an intern, if I do call duty in the emergency room, I lose money compared to any job paid at minimum wage. And yet it’s night work, it’s work of incredible density. We may not have time to drink a glass of water and go to the toilet at night. We concentrate all that society can contain of human misery, distress, loneliness, pain, gravity, we are faced with death, etc.explains Thibault Steinmetz.

“If you want doctors, you have to pay them. Doctors’ salaries may seem high, but they have to be reduced to the hourly rate. A 24-hour call is two-thirds of a Frenchman’s working week”he insists.

To find all the exchanges, go this Sunday, May 14 at 11:25 am on France 3 Alpes in the program Sunday in Politics presented by Jordan Guéant.