For years, nurses in intensive care units have been asking for recognition of their specialty, appropriate training and salary increases.

In intensive care, the treatments are specific, multiple and often very complex. To be comfortable, a minimum of one year of practice is necessary.

Valentine Brzezinski has been a nurse in intensive care for three years. 12-hour days, difficult cases, important responsibilities… For around 1,750 euros net per month. What to discourage more than one.

“I saw a lot of people arrive but also a lot of people leave. It’s problematic in the sense that we have the impression of starting from scratch, having to reform new professionals and it is not easy to supervise, it requires all the more energy too.”, She explains.

Turnover, a headache

Five new nurses arrived in his department at the Pitié-Salpêtrière hospital in Paris at the beginning of January. This turnover is a headache for the organization but also for patient safety and maintaining the quality of care.

For Professor Jean-Michel Constantin, head of the anesthesia-intensive care unit at the Pitié-Salpêtrière hospital in Paris, upgrading the role of intensive care nurses is a necessity.

“It is not a medal neither of merit nor in chocolate that one asks, it is an additional training. Who says additional training says confidence, says improvement in the quality of care, says reduction of complications and what we hope in the long term is that this will lead to greater stability of the intensive care units”, He explains.

In France, a nurse assigned to an intensive care unit stays in his post on average for only two years.