Objective: to "modify the practice" of a nurse. François Braun, the Minister of Health, launched this Friday a process of reform of the training and profession of nurse, which he hopes to see completed by the start of the 2024 school year. "We need to change the skills" of the profession, explained the minister, citing in particular the increasing priority given to prevention.
It marked the start of the process with a seminar on Thursday and Friday on the "refoundation of the nursing profession", attended by 31 members of the profession, but not the unions and the College of Nurses. This "co-construction" seminar was intended to "look for ideas", according to Braun's firm, but "everyone will have their place" in subsequent discussions.
Faced with the chronic shortage of doctors, the government is working hard to relieve them of tasks that can be done by others, especially nurses. François Braun's ambition is to review the "decree of acts", which strictly regulates the acts that nurses can do, to introduce "missions", in a less rigid framework and leaving more possibilities for adjustment according to needs.
Mistrust of several organizations
An evolution supported by the president of the Order of Nurses, Patrick Chamboredon, who welcomed "the announcement of the opening of work on the passage from a decree of acts to a decree with missions", a request of the Order "for many years".
But it arouses the mistrust, even the hostility of several nursing organizations, who fear a disruption of the distribution of roles between caregivers. Daniel Guillerm, president of the FNI (national federation of nurses, the main union of liberal nurses) warned against "crushing the decree of acts", while saying he was in favor of "backing it with missions" in certain areas such as prevention or public health.
"The shortage of medical and nursing staff cannot be compensated by new distribution of tasks and missions," said the CGT Health and Social Action, which is demanding increases in staff and remuneration to make the profession more attractive.
Facing a paradox
Regarding training, the government wants to face the paradox of a high dropout rate of nursing students in the first year (10%), while this training is the most requested by high school students on Parcoursup (90,000 requests last year, for 38,000 places in training today).
Young people who probably drop out "do not find the training they expected" and see "a discrepancy between the training and what they see on the field," explained this week François Braun on CNews. "Training content needs to be reviewed" in the face of "new needs, especially in pediatrics and child health, or mental health," his office also said.
In total, "the idea is that in September 2024, we have both transformed the profession and evolved training," said the same source.
International Nurses Day on Friday was also marked by a strike by nurse anaesthetists (IADE), who fear that their separate status in the profession will dissolve in current and future reforms. Nurse anaesthetists, who have completed two additional years of study, enjoy greater autonomy in their collaboration with the physician than other specialties.