2023-06-20 14:00:02
It’s an appointment that nursing students and future doctors cannot postpone, an unforeseen event that slips surreptitiously into the course of a day, a first encounter that they will never forget, the one with death. When health students are confronted the first times with the end of life of patients. “They are still very young”underlines the doctor of pharmacy Sophie Séronie-Vivien, professor at the faculty of of Toulouse and president of the commission for student well-being. Yet they have to manage their emotions, and they often do it alone.
Alexis, a medical student at Paris Cité University, is starting a third-year internship in oncology in 2022. A doctor entrusts him with the routine health check-up of a patient in her fifties, “a bubbly woman, in good shape”, remembers the student. The first examination is worrying, the complementary examination reveals metastasized breast cancer. “She was one of my first patients, she was doomed. Something underwater rose in me, I thought of my mother, I transferred to my own family, it stirred me. It was strong. »
This emotion, following the death of one of his first patients, Maëlys, now 21, in his second year at the Institute of Nursing Training (IFSI) of Grenoble, has also experienced it. In early 2022, she completed her first internship at the university hospital center (CHU) of his city in traumatology. “This is not the service where there are the most deaths”, she observes. He is entrusted with a patient. “I help her eat, I wash her”, summarizes Maëlys. The patient hardly speaks any more. “But I discover non-verbal communication, through patience, the time spent performing care, the attention I pay to it”, said the student nurse. One morning, Maëlys sees an open emergency trolley in the hallway, an indication that a patient has left the service. She asks the nurse on duty: “She replies that my patient is dead, she pronounces the words without sadness, I feel that it is normal for her, when we are talking about a death. » Emotion overwhelms her, the first semester student cries, but other patients are waiting for care, and the staff is in tension. “We’ll talk about it later”, launches his tutor. The hospital must run.
First dive
When, baccalaureate in hand, nursing students leave high school for an IFSI, they are given a few weeks of theoretical training during which empathy and benevolence are discussed, which will make them “caregivers”. Then the students are sent on an internship for a first immersion. This is often done in a residential establishment for dependent elderly people. (Ehpad). “It is an essential step, exposes Jean-Marc Boussard, director of the training institutes of the southern Yvelines hospital group, they learn to carry out primary care of comfort, hygiene and well-being to the person [toilette, alimentation] that they will practice throughout their life as caregivers. »
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