“We don’t feel safe”
Franz Boussegui is a nurse and trade union official in Nice. “Cases of threats or harassment? Yes, there are some every week. You can’t imagine all that caregivers are going through. Women are more concerned, but male colleagues are not immune either. Everyone everyone has already experienced it. Without exception. It’s tragic to say but we’re starting to get used to it.” However, the anger remains.
“Nurses very regularly hear inappropriate remarks, sometimes said in a joking tone. Except that it’s never funny, it’s heavy, it’s sexist and it’s above all unacceptable. I have colleagues to whom patients offer money in exchange for sex. These men have no embarrassment. And when they get snubbed, they still don’t see what the problem is.”
And Franz Boussegui also recounts very equivocal gestures. “How many colleagues have suffered hands on the buttocks, caresses… Patients allow themselves to touch them. These are assaults, nothing more and nothing less.”
Patricia can also testify: “Many nurses doing home care have found naked men (when it was not necessary for the care), sometimes erect! See how shocking that is!”
For Franz Boussegui, “there are many, many patients in the vast majority of men who have totally maladaptive behaviors. We go to people’s homes, so sometimes they feel uninhibited. In a hospital, there are people, they don’t not allow such things.”
If professionals refocus patients, these behaviors end up weighing on morale. “There is an accumulation in the long run, a mental load that becomes suffocating, indicates the union official. Colleagues end up changing jobs altogether, tired of fighting against this harassment. Especially since the police do not always take complaints. , believing that it is not worth it. We do not feel safe when we practice our profession as a liberal.”