A month of strike, and an exhausted staff. The 39 nurses of the neonatal resuscitation service at the Delafontaine hospital in Saint-Denis (Seine-Saint-Denis) can no longer take it. The strike began on December 29, but the nurses almost never stopped working, requisitioned to provide a minimum service. Houria*, a nurse, describes difficult working conditions. In addition to having an average of three babies to manage, she has to perform a multitude of tasks on the side. Washing the incubators, installing the infusions, answering the parents’ questions… It happens, she says, that there are only two nurses left in the department to manage around fifteen children.
“It’s our daily life to let babies cry”
Babies can stay crying for a long time without anyone to come and relieve them. “They can cry in a vacuum for more than 10 minutes,” said Houria*, bruised. “It is part of our daily life to let babies cry, if there is a baby whose oxygen level is decreasing and others who are crying, we cannot go and see them for sometimes tens of minutes without even we know they are crying,” confirms Asia*, another nurse.
Due to overwork, some children and parents simply cannot get the promised care. “For example, a mother who had to be helped to change her diaper and give her a bottle, we told her that we would be back around 8 p.m., but at 8:30 p.m. there was still no one, so she went back home. . Houria* also remembers a mother, equipped with a catheter, who waited for it to be removed so she could go to the toilet, and who ended up urinating on herself. And nurses today say they are “afraid” for babies.
Strike fund
A first meeting was held with management on December 27. The nurses demanded, in addition to additional staff, an increase in their overtime hours to 100% and that a tire be installed in the service to lower the balance sheets of small patients. Without success. So, to maintain their struggle, the nurses have set up a strike fund over the past two weeks.
But a meeting last week was more successful, and it looks like the strike exit is looming. According to Sandra*, a nurse present at the meeting, the management would have accepted the increase in overtime to 100% from November 1, 2022, and the creation of four day care assistant positions and two at night, corresponding to about ten new hires. And above all, respect for supervision ratios. That is no more than two babies for a nurse in intensive care, three for a nurse in intensive care and six for a nurse caring for babies neither in intensive care nor in intensive care.
Sandra is pleased with the turn taken by the negotiations: “We are waiting, we do not know yet if we are going to sign this strike exit protocol again, but if everything goes well, we will sign. This is already a big step forward, compared to the first discussions with management. » Contacted by 20 minutes, the hospital confirms: “The management has accepted a certain number of demands formulated through a protocol which is being finalized with a view, we hope, to an end to the strike in the coming days. »
*Names have been changed