Staff waiting room

In France, a staff waiting room is a place located in a Hospital and where meet people ensuring on-call service, from where them name. However, they are especially the Intern S and their guests who attend these rooms dedicated to the meals, rest and the relaxation.

The boarding school

Traditionally, the boarding school is the place where the interns of the hospital live. Currently, the interns less often live on the site of the hospital, but a building is reserved for this use (the term Intern theoretically appoints a “doctor/pharmacist which lives at the hospital”). In France, the interns are recruited since 1802 per national competition (the boarding school of medicine, replaced today by the national examination classifying (ECN) or of pharmacy) and are affected according to their classification with a CHU.

The interns have a hybrid statute: they are in fact paid of the hospital, but remain regarded as students: that makes it possible to make them work unconstrained schedule, up to 70 to see 90 hours per week. The principle of a right at rest for the interns after a guard (rest of safety or compensatory rest) had been negotiated in 2000 to answer an European directive aiming at improving safety of the patients. Bernard Kouchner, then Minister for Health had removed it, starting a six weeks strike when the trade-union organizations of the interns had become exhausted to make recognize this right in 2001. However, the situation allowed the ministry Health not to make profit the interns from the law over the 35 hours in their allotting the statute of students. The trade unions of hospital students then pointed out that Bernard Kouchner had never been internal because of his failure with the contest, and it is often reproached to him for not having assumed it.

The Staff waiting room is the place where the interns and their guests are restored, fossil (senior registrars and hospital practitioners), dinosaurs (department heads and experts hospital-professors of the universities) or external.

This room generally is very animated, and decorated with frescos often (but not necessarily) grivoises caricaturing the members with the staff waiting room and/or their department heads.

The staff waiting room is managed by the économale team consisted a sparing assisted by assistant treasurers and économinettes, elected at the beginning of six-month period (the interns change every 6 months of service and hospital). This team can be reversed at any time by the guests.

If the boarding school goes back to 1802, certain traditions rifles go back to the creation of the faculty of Montpellier at the 11th century. The staff waiting rooms are a cultural heritage now threatened.

Rules of staff waiting room

The experiment showing that the doctors lunching at the self-service gather by service and discuss only medicine, a payment was created to give a convivial tone in staff waiting room. Very contravener with this payment is likely to be punished of a “tax” (pledge), chosen by the treasurer or the wheel.

The guests settle by order of arrival in “quincunx” (the tables are laid out out of U on the basis of the table économale). No place must be left vacant. This makes it possible to prevent that the guests do not place themselves by service or affinities, which makes it possible all to know itself within the hospital although the interns change assignment every 6 months (the staff waiting rooms improve considerably interservice operation of the last hospital a certain size).

The new arrivals greet all the guests by a slap on the back before intaller. They pay homage in a deferent way to the sparing and to its or its économinette (S).

It is interdict to rise without the authorization of the treasurer.

It is interdict to smoke before the Café is on the table.

The medical terms, as well as the religious and political conversations are proscribed, and thus chargeable. If a guest surprises a prohibited word, it is highly encouraged to denounce it with the treasurer (denouncement). It will do it by making mine not include/understand it. If doubt there is on the scientific or medical character word, the treasurer makes come the cook and asks to him whether it knows the significance of it. If he knows it, it will be about a false denouncement which is chargeable.

Only the économale team can address itself directly to the kitchens.

The use of the corkscrew is interdict in staff waiting room: all the bottles are sabred with a table knife.

In the same way, there is no towel (one essuie in the tablecloth).

The applause is prohibited: a witty remark, an act of plume are rewarded by one beaten (see further) .

The effect of this payment and the capacities of the treasurer cease when the coffee arrives on the table. It is at this time that many requests for examinations or specialized opinions are negotiated, often accelerating the appointments of several days and improving operation of the hospital.

The external ones and invited are not chargeable (it is the intern which covers them which is taxed in their place if necessary).

Beaten

A witty remark, an act of plume are celebrated by beating a rate/rhythm on the table. Oldest are the Royal one, the Power station (which fights only with the Hôtel-Dieu) and the Peripheral. In 1802, there was only one intern of guard on Paris and it went to the residence patients called by a rate/rhythm beaten by a drum. The rate/rhythm made it possible to know the distance: the Power station for the Island of the City, the Royal one (because at the same distance that the Royal Place) for Paris will intra muros, the Peripheral for the suburbs.

The beaten traditional ones are: the Vaginal one, the Anal one, Zob (all three on the rate/rhythm of the Peripheral), the Bolero (crescendo on the rate/rhythm of the Bolero of Ravel, the Nun, Merdique (while dropping the knife in its plate).

Very beaten original and invented over the moment to adapt to the circumstances and the celebrated act is welcome.

One will quote for example: Mongolienne, the Anarchistic one, Ronaldo (which fights only with the Pity-Salpêtrière with the knee on the table on the air of 1 and 2 and 3-0), the Khroutchévienne (which fights Chaussure with the hand and which ends in a generalized jet of shoes).

The spirit of staff waiting room

The staff waiting rooms are one of last spaces of freedom and creativity which still escape vagueness from standardization from the beginning from the 21e century. Except the infringements with the payment all is allowed there. The interns can make fun there of their department head in all impunity. The verbal tournaments are proverbial there. The bawdy songs proliferate there. Nothing of what occurs in staff waiting room must leave there. All contributes so that each one exposes to it its individual artistic talents the most varied and most original while freeing itself from its timidity and the many yokes which the glance of the others imposes.

A threatened inheritance

Presence of space not controlled is not inevitably well seen by directions of hospital which does not include/understand of it the cultural aspect (the patrimonial aspect is however recognized by the Public assistance which devoted to it an exposure at the time of the bicentenary of the boarding school in 2002), which does not see the interest that the staff waiting rooms make it possible to the interns (who are the mainstay of the hospital) to know each other whereas they change assignment every 6 months, which do not carry out that they improve considerably operation of the great structures. No doubt as the hospital administrations fear as these places of user-friendliness and complicity become the leaven of the claims and the revolts. It is indeed much more difficult to federate when one does not know oneself and that one does not on the occasion to find oneself, to act in concert.

It thus seems that the tendency is to operate to make them die in small fire. The kitchens are not maintained so that they are not any more to the standards. One closes then these kitchens to transfer their activity in central kitchen (the Kremlin-Bicêtre, Pity-Salpêtrière, Evry…). One then provides to the staff waiting room a food râgoutante, not very favourable to release the spirits little, which kills environment. Little by little, the interns are obliged to eat at the common self-service to find a food correct. And one benefits from the change of six-month period to close the staff waiting room insidiously… (a sudden need for space to extend from the administrative services gives place to work completed in record time).

Gradually, the administrations of the hospitals destroy an inheritance which has more than 200 years of age (even thousand years for certain traditions).

External bond

Site of the association of the staff waiting rooms

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