OCCUPATIONAL HEALTH OF MEDICAL INTERNS. AN APPROACH BASED ON REAL WORK AND AWARENESS OF DUALITIES
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.3917/grhu.131.0064Keywords:
medical interns, real work, managing paradoxes, occupational healthAbstract
“Doctors, not stoogies”2 chanted the medical interns during the strike on 14 October 2022. Angry, they demanded better working conditions. The Covid 19 crisis highlighted the problems of the French hospital system, but these young doctors have been experiencing difficulties for decades, jeopardising their health at work. In pursuing their profession, they are subjected to paradoxical situations; however, the literature does not reveal a significant drop-out rate among interns, which raises the question of how they deal with such situations. This paper aimed to analyse the work of interns, identify the content of the paradoxes encountered and understand the need to manage them.
A qualitative study was carried out in a provincial university hospital. Twenty semi-structured interviews were conducted with a heterogeneous sample of young doctors. The results showed four intern profiles: “projectionists”, “challengers”, “self-acknowledgers” and “conformists”. The regulatory levers used by the interns to manage these paradoxes were also analysed.
