Paris (AFP)
Precariousness, lack of staff, time for the well-being of the patients: three women, among the 830.000 employees of the "old age", testify of their work on the eve of the delivery of an expected report of Myriam El Khomri on the "Disaffection" for jobs with the elderly, yet essential.
Laetitia Mauré, life assistant: "We must upgrade wages"
"It is normal that the sector does not manage to recruit, it is necessary to revalue the wages and the allowance kilometric It is more possible to pay to go to work", testifies to the AFP Laetitia Mauré, auxiliary of life to home.
"The kilometric allowance, 35 cents per kilometer, it's been 10 years that it has not been revalued," says the 48-year-old, tired of seeing "number of auxiliaries living below the poverty line ".
"The issue of casualization of the elderly", more and more present according to her, "resonates with our own precariousness".
An employee of a home-care company with more than 200 employees, Mauré believes that her working conditions are "difficult to maintain". "We have less and less time, we are asked to take care of a person in 30 minutes, but it is impossible," she says.
His morning type? "We arrive, we say hello, we open the shutters, we lift the person for the transfer bed-chair and, if it is heavy, it's complicated.Add to that a shower, nice words and some administrative procedures, it takes time. "
Sandrine Ossart, nursing assistant in Ehpad: "Not enough qualified staff"
"In theory, we must offer residents therapeutic activities to do + as at home +, that is to say, to train them every day to make the gestures of everyday life.In reality, it does not happen because there is not enough qualified personnel ", depicted to AFP Sandrine Ossart, 49, caregiver to residents diagnosed" Alzheimer and related "in a nursing home.
For Ms. Ossart, who has a degree in gerontology care assistant (ASG), which allows the handling of these heavy cases, this lack of trained personnel causes "errors and neglect".
On her floor of a private Ehpad of 84 places, "there are two caregivers for 24 residents," she adds. "On a daily basis, we spend our time training people, temporary workers, who will not be able to keep track of these residents and will only stay for a short time."
"We hear about elder abuse in the Ehpad, it's unfair because I love my job, but the truth is that I can not take care of everyone as I would like," she continues.
The "difficulty of work" also generates "health problems," says Ms. Ossart, who says suffering, after 26 years of career, recurring body pain in the shoulders and knees.
Maryvonne Quesseveur, nurse's aide at the hospital: "Too many overtime hours"
"Elderly patients require a lot more attention because the goal is to preserve their degree of autonomy", testifies AFP Maryvonne Quesseveur, a caregiver in a hospital in the Paris region, who regularly works overtime in geriatrics due to lack of staff.
"But we do not have time to listen to their loneliness, their distress," says the 42-year-old woman, who chose this path "by vocation" and for "human contact".
"People no longer want to do care work," she says, denouncing "a desire to destroy the public hospital environment" and "irrational" situations.
"Our working conditions are such, that the care devoted to bedridden patients to allow them to recover after an intervention is insufficient.This sometimes leads to a deterioration of their health: bedsores, irritations, pains.Medical consequences which make the durations of hospitalization that one seeks so much to shorten ... ".
© 2019 AFP