After a summer of high tension, is France’s leading hospital group heading towards an end to the crisis? While the AP-HP (Assistance publique-Hôpitaux de Paris) was forced to close 200 hospital beds in the first half of 2022, 400 new beds, including 100 dedicated to psychiatric care, will be added to the 18,000 that the AP-HP.
Enough to reassure the nursing staff, whose numbers will also increase. 400 more nurses than last year are due to arrive by the end of the year. A “positive signal” for Nicolas Revel, general director of the AP-HP, who is counting on the recruitment of caregivers to reopen hospital beds closed due to lack of sufficient staff. But the one who set himself the objective last December of reversing the trend wants to be cautious. “We remain in difficulty (recruiting) in certain professions, such as radio technicians, operating room nurses or midwives,” notes Nicolas Revel.
Focus on improving working conditions
As soon as he arrived at the head of the AP-HP in July 2022, Nicolas Revel took head on the recruitment crisis which is suffocating France’s leading hospital group. While at the end of the year, Paris hospitals find themselves without 1,700 caregivers, Martin Hirsch’s successor presents his action plan made up of around thirty measures aimed at accelerating hiring. To achieve this, Nicolas Revel is focusing above all on improving the integration and working conditions of caregivers.
It must be said that the human resources crisis is affecting the entire French public hospital. In total, 21,000 hospital beds were closed between 2016 and 2021, according to a report from the Directorate of Research, Studies, Evaluation and Statistics (Dress) published in September 2022. Hospital nurses and doctors continue to warn of the “catastrophic” situation in the public hospital, the difficulties of which were particularly highlighted during the Covid-19 pandemic. At the beginning of July, on the eve of vacation departures and 15 days after a first movement, hospital staff met again for a day of mobilization. “It is impossible to take more than 15 days off in summer, you can work day or night in the same week, you can be called back at any time to make up for the absence of a colleague… Everyone is in a hurry like lemons”, testifies a caregiver, questioned by our colleagues from France 3 Burgundy.
Deterioration of working conditions in 41% of establishments
And for good reason: the lack of staff, linked to low salaries and restrictive hours, condemns hospitals to the closure of beds, sometimes to the point of shutting down an entire department. A reality which concerns more than two thirds of the departments in France, and which has caused a deterioration of working conditions in 41% of establishments, according to a study by the Federation of Public Hospitals (FHF). “Working conditions have become unbearable and inhumane for our exhausted professionals,” denounces the Samu-Urgences de France union, which for its part recorded the closure of nearly one in two services this summer.
A heavy summer assessment largely nuanced by the new Minister of Health, Aurélien Rousseau, appointed during the summer. “We have 680 emergency services in France, 5 were completely closed this summer, around 40 had to close occasionally,” he assured at the beginning of September on France 2. Traveling to Rouen on the theme of health on Last August 31, the Prime Minister announced a total of more than a billion euros in salary increases for the benefit of hospital caregivers, in particular for night work and on Sundays.
But while the number of candidates for the hospital practitioner competition has once again fallen by 17%, from 4,056 applications in 2022 to 3,364 in 2023 for 10,846 vacant positions, it remains to be seen whether these announcements will be enough to give back to the profession its attractiveness gone.