A nurse at the Avignon hospital is indignant because she has continued his guards with his patients while being sick with Covid. This nurse assures that she alerted her management when her test was positive with pain and fever. She feels that the hospital forces her to work because it is understaffed. The director of the hospital replies that it is a exceptional malfunction. He invites this nurse to alert his hierarchy because the policy of the hospital is to dismiss any positive staff with symptoms, even if he recognizes that he is short of staff.
Pain, high fever and positive test but at work anyway
When we meet the nurse, Marie* is tired of her guards at the hospital, but above all because the nurse is sick: “I tested positive for Covid 19 with symptoms of severe throat pain, fatigue and hyperthermia. I called my management who told me to go to work positive with my patients. And I did”.
The director of the Avignon hospital is very surprised by this situation. Pierre Pinzelli shows the notices displayed in each service: “Any positive person and even more so if they are symptomatic are dismissed from work. We have the opposite policy to the one described in this testimonial. However, if there has been a malfunction, it is exceptional”.
The argument of the lack of personnel is not valid
Marie the nurse thinks that the lack of nursing staff is at the origin of the instructions of her management “normally when you’re symptomatic, you don’t come back to work. Except that the nosocomial control committee told me to come”. When asked if she is alone in this case, Marie replies that “Colleagues have already been called back several times despite a work stoppage. In addition, we suspend unvaccinated caregivers while we are short of caregivers or nurses. It’s been years since we’ve been in need of caregivers and we’ve been cutting beds!”.
“Don’t, don’t don’t”for the director of the Avignon hospital, the argument of hospital tension is not valid. “This is a shortcut that I refute categorically” assene Pierre Pinzelli; “Of course there are recruitment tensions but our policy is very clear: anyone who is symptomatic and positive is dismissed from work. This is the rule at the Avignon hospital. On the other hand, if it is completely asymptomatic, the question may arise. Even so, we keep very few staff at work, but I don’t remember any case of this type at the Avignon hospital”. The director invites this nurse to meet her superiors to “to bring up this dysfunction which will have to be analyzed in transparency and with benevolence”.
*The first name of the nurse has been changed at her request
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