We haven't seen them on the tv shows during the epidemic of Covid-19, but it's them, the great majority of which have been running for the hospital services in voltage. The internal, the doctors at the end of training, constitute 25% of the medical staff of public institutions and up to 40 % of the hospital-university centres. Bac + 6 at a minimum, they work on average 58,4 hours per week for a salary of 1 552 euros and 119 euros per guard for 12 hours at night, after their national Inter (ISNI).

Without counting their hours, they volunteered to accept and treat the infected persons in institutions in comprehensive reorganisation, they have made possible the opening of hundreds of beds in a critical care, intensive care, infectious diseases, ensuring permanent medical 24 hours on 24. Their career started with a big bang. They will remember all their lives. They have paid a heavy price for their commitment : 40,3 % of them were contaminated, according to the survey conducted by the ISNI and the results of which have just been made public (1).

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Only 53.5% of these students-doctors symptomatic have been able to have access to a diagnosis by virologic test or chest. 56.5% continued to care for patients being contagious, compensating for the shortages of nursing staff. To 64.8 % reported not having received a sufficient number of personal protective equipment during this crisis. Only 46 % reported to have had training provided by their hospital to the hygiene procedures for specific dressing and undressing during the examination of a patient contaminated or suspected of being so.

For these failures, they are infected, spread the virus to colleagues, other patients and people around them. Fighters of the new coronavirus, they have also been among the main drivers. The Point publish starting today, six of their testimonies among the 24 collected between 17 march and 25 April, by the editor Stephen Career (2). "We simply did our job," says one of the members of this group.

Read the episodes of our series :

Covid – Words of internal : "Always this damn silence"

Covid – Words of internal : "today, it wouldn't even work in csr"

(1) 981 internal responded to a questionnaire between march 4 and may 19, 2020.
(2) Words of internal, Collective, Editions Anne Carrière, 250 pages, 13 euros, available in bookstores on June 26, 2020. For each copy sold, the amount of 2 euros will be donated to the Pasteur Institute.