The Minister of Health, Olivier Véran, announced Wednesday, at the end of the Council of Ministers, that he wanted to put an end to the "impoverishment" of the nursing staff. In France, the salary for hiring a hospital nurse is 1,340 euros net, and he can hope to end his career at 2,400 euros net. According to the latest figures published by the OECD, the 300,000 French nurses who work at the public hospital are at the bottom of the pack in the European Union concerning their remuneration, in 22nd place out of 33. This dropout is explained, among other reasons, for historical reasons, but also by the distribution of working time.
If nurses in France are badly paid, it is first of all a legacy of history. For a long time, this mission was entrusted to the nuns who nursed by vocation, and therefore free of charge. Something remained of it, in the hospital as in teaching professions for that matter, often endorsed by religious in the past.
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This context does not always exist abroad where the approach is more neutral: a nursing diploma quite simply gives skills, which correspond to a level of salary. And then in France, there is also the question of the status of the hospital public service which hangs over the payroll, as explained Muriel Salle, health historian: "This can lead nurses to accept a lower level of remuneration, as the price to pay for job security. "
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And then, nurses do not do exactly the same job depending on the country. In Scandinavia or in Anglo-Saxon countries, they make more medical gestures than in France and are therefore better paid. Finally, the last difference: working time. Nurses work 40 hours a week in Germany compared to 35 hours in France, which partly explains the difference in monthly wages. Except that if we compare the hourly wages, German women continue to earn more than French women.