Working time of medical interns: François Braun recognizes an "old problem"

The Minister of Health, François Braun, responded to the claims of medical interns during an interview with France Inter, Wednesday, May 3

Working time of medical interns: François Braun recognizes an "old problem"

The Minister of Health, François Braun, responded to the claims of medical interns during an interview with France Inter, Wednesday, May 3. Some of the 30,000 interns were on strike on Friday April 28 to denounce their working conditions.

“It is not normal that we do not respect the working time for doctors in training, noted the minister. I will hunt down establishments that do not respect the rules. »

The working time "blithely exceeds the authorized legal maximum" of forty-eight hours per week, and reaches "sometimes more than 100 hours per week", said Guillaume Bailly, vice-president of the Intersyndicale Nationale des Internes (ISNI), on Europe 1, Friday. "You don't learn your trade by working 80 or 100 hours a week," the minister replied.

An "old" problem

The government, for its part, introduced by decree at the beginning of the year "a financial penalty system" to sanction hospitals "which do not respect the regulations relating to the working time" of interns.

"It's an old problem in the functioning of our hospitals, where the interns were forced to work at will," admitted François Braun. The medical interns had already called for a strike on Friday 18 and Saturday 19 June 2021. They have only one demand: to work "only" forty-eight hours a week.

“Already, in 2019, interns in France worked an average of 58.4 hours per week. And it has not improved, "especially with the Covid-19 crisis, then alerted Gaétan Casanova, president of ISNI at the time. "We put ourselves in danger physically, psychologically", hammered the intern in anesthesia-resuscitation, supporting investigations.

A study carried out in 2017 at the initiative of the ISNI pointed out that 23.7% of interns had already had suicidal thoughts, 28% had suffered from depressive disorders, and 66% from anxiety disorders. "And it's also dangerous for the patient," added Gaétan Casanova. When, at the end of shift, it is difficult to make a subject / verb / complement sentence, I would like someone to explain to me how we can take care of a patient in an optimal way. »