Que faire des violences rapportées par les étudiants ?

Based on the reflexive essays of healthcare students (medicine, midwifery), we establish three questions: 1- what violence is reported? 2- how to deal with this violence, for and with the students who report it? 3- what to do, at an institutional level (medical school and healthcare establishments), with this violence? Some of the violence experienced by the students is of an ontological nature, linked to human and healthcare conditions. The lack of reflection around this ontological violence, and problematic experiences for patients, families or the students themselves, creates a second, preventable kind of violence. Working with these students on the violence of/in their studies takes place in an educational environment that recognizes them as young adults with a need to shape their very being before working in the technical and existential fields of healthcare. This framework needs to be guided and thought-provoking enough for the students to feel safe and speak freely, formulating critical and supported reflections. Their experiences form a lively, educational base, from which we can differentiate two kinds of violence, coming from a detachment from the models of biomedicine, of crises, of “experts”, and of a simple problem. The question of transgression for medical purposes, linked to humanizing or dehumanizing interventions on the body of others is sizable. To work at an institutional level, it is necessary to reflect upon the specificity of the asymmetrical student-teacher relationship in healthcare, and to question social responsibilities in the way silence, exclusion, and freedom are related to.