“We are intubating you, they are inducing us!” : nurse anesthetists took to the streets of several cities in France today, Monday, May 17 to demand recognition of their specialty and wage increases.

Defense of their know-how

Green and blue coats, masks on the nose and resuscitation tubes on the head, they were a hundred, in Bordeaux, to answer the call for the strike and the demonstration of the CGT.

Nursing anesthetists defend the know-how of their profession “advanced, transversal and versatile”, that they want to see at the same time “sanctuary”, and revalued from the point of view of salaries, to take into account their five years of study.

A specialized course but no status

The approximately 10,000 State-certified nurse anesthetists (IADE) in French hospitals have followed a specialization course for two years, after the initial three years in nursing school.

“We cannot, on the one hand, call us overnight to go to intensive care, medical evacuation, emergencies, while waiting for the same level of excellence, and on the other hand, deny us a status to go”, argues Julie, 35, nurse anesthetist at Bordeaux University Hospital for five years.

“We’re at the end of our rope. We would like our versatility to be recognized”, explains Sandrine, 50, who says she earns less than 3,000 euros gross, after 25 years of work, including 20 as a nurse anesthetist.

Students mobilized

In Lille too, there were around a hundred, many of them students, gathered around a false coffin. “nurse anesthetists. 1949-2021”. For Arnaud Warot, nurse anesthetist in Douai and spokesperson for the regional collective, it is important to “bring back to the executive the exhaustion and the feeling of contempt and abandonment of the profession”.

Ludovic, still a student, would like the training program for nurse anesthetists, undermined by the health crisis, to be respected: “our internship hours in anesthesia are diminishing, in favor of the reacovid hours. We forget that our learning is done through experience”.

A strike had already affected 110 intensive care units on May 11, according to the national union of nurse anesthetists.