ReportingAnger, doubts, anxieties: for some caregivers who have just resolved to vaccination, the constraint is difficult to live with.
“It’s a bit complicated, the home stretch. “ At the university hospital (CHU) of Nîmes, Doctor Anne Arnaud recognizes him in a calm and composed tone, behind his desk in a small box of the vaccination center. It receives there in particular the caregivers who still come to be vaccinated, a few days before the entry into force of the obligation, on a wooded hill of 50 hectares a few kilometers to the south-west of the arenas, where are dispersed the hospital buildings and some prefabs installed for nearly ten months for vaccination against Covid-19.
The mood has changed in recent weeks, as the deadline for the vaccine obligation draws closer. By September 15, all hospital staff must have received at least one dose, or have a post-Covid contraindication or recovery certificate, under penalty of being suspended. “Those who come now are those who waited until the last moment, so the reluctant people”, summarizes the retired biologist, who came to help the hospital in this campaign and the occupational medicine for interviews with hesitant or refractory caregivers.
An obligation experienced as a “punishment”
Marie-José Curabec, 51, is one of the staff who changed their minds at the last minute: she left the room where she was injected with her second dose on September 8. Until the heart of summer, the administrative agent at the hospital entrance office still had “Too afraid of the unknown of the vaccine”, despite his discussions with caregivers. The trigger came from elsewhere, when a stretcher bearer told him, on his return from vacation, that he had gone to look for a pregnant woman and her baby with Covid … “It freaked me out, you see, it still does something to me to say it, she confides. I turned on my heels and made an appointment for myself, my son and my husband! “
Beyond the fears about the vaccine, Dr. Anne Arnaud finds herself especially in front of caregivers “Very uplifted” against an obligation “That they live as a punishment, after having given a lot”. “We see them arriving dragging their feet “, says her nursing colleague. “For them, it is the last straw after a very strong investment, a year and a half of crisis spent canceling holidays, to come when the masks were missing, to give a lot, resumes the 64-year-old doctor. And now they feel they are being stigmatized, sometimes in their service as well, and they often express muffled anger against the government. “
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