“Medical Interns in France Demand Better Working Conditions and Pay”

A “day without intern” at the hospital. This is the action called by the National Intersyndicale of medical interns this Friday. Young doctors protest against their working conditions: a net salary of 1,800 euros on average and weeks that regularly exceed 58 hours of workaccording to the National Intersyndicale des interns (Isni), well beyond the 48 regulatory hours.

The interns therefore first ask a real count of their working hourswhich hospitals are still not doing despite warnings. They also claim 300 euros more salary per month and a housing allowance indexed to rents of at least 300 euros grossbecause most of these young doctors are not housed in boarding schools.

An intern commits suicide every 18 days in France

“Interns, who represent 40% of doctors in public hospitals, have living and working conditions which are unworthy and which are no longer tolerable”asserts Olivia Fraigneau, president of ISNI. She insists on the situation of psychological distress of these young doctors, thus explaining that“An intern commits suicide every 18 days in France, which still represents three times more suicides than young people of the same age in other professions.” Olivia Fraigneau demands that these young doctors be “finally considered as health professionals in their own right” and therefore be “treated and remunerated as such”. The president of Isni recalls that today, an intern wins “6.40 euros per hour at bac+7.”