Healthcare workers are rallying to defend public hospitals
Symbolic funerals, moments of silence, declarations of love… In recent years, as public hospitals have faced cutbacks, many healthcare workers have turned to creative forms of protest that focus on death and love. It is a way of reminding people that healthcare is not a commodity but a pillar of society.
Ludivine Perray-Redslob, EM Lyon Business School; Agathe Morinière, University of Montpellier and Nathalie Clavijo, TBS Education
Insufficient resources, staff shortages, violence in emergency rooms, bed closures, and burnout among healthcare staff… warning signs have been mounting in French publichospitals since the implementation of reforms under the “new public management” framework.
Last January, the emergency room staff at the Rennes Hospital (Ille-et-Vilaine) went on strike following the deaths of two patients who were waiting on stretchers. In Aix-en-Provence (Bouches-du-Rhône), that same month, a patient waiting for a spot in the emergency room died before she could be treated. On January 8, 2026, Health Minister Stéphanie Rist, for her part, reported “tension in all emergency departments.” All these events highlight the urgency of the problem.
However, since 2019, in response to these recurring situations, two groups of healthcare workers—the Collectif Inter-Urgences and the Collectif Inter-Hôpitaux—have been drawing attention to the human cost of these profit-driven healthcare policies by taking to the streets and social media.
Over the course of four years, we conducted research on these two collectives and collected texts, songs, music videos, photographs, videos, and drawings—either created by the healthcare workers themselves or shared by these collectives on social media. In their demands, healthcare workers use death and love as political languages to examine our collective relationship to care, public service, and solidarity.
"Symbolically 'killing off' the hospital' to raise awareness"
Coffins carried through the streets, funeral processions, moments of silence held in front of hospitals: at first glance, these scenes may seem surprising. Why symbolically “bury” the public hospital just as healthcare workers are fighting to save it? Because the symbolism of death acts as a wake-up call. By staging the death of the hospital, healthcare workers seek to raise awareness: without a collective response, this essential pillar of our society risks disappearing. These mourning rituals give visible form to a slow and often invisible process: the gradual erosion of the public health care system.
Death also serves as a reminder of a simple truth that accounting logic tends to obscure: hospitals are a vital part of our infrastructure. We all depend on them, sooner or later. In this sense, death is not merely an end; it becomes a political language that speaks to the urgent need for action.
Highlighting the vulnerability of healthcare workers
The protests are not limited to the hospital system itself. They also draw attention to the bodies of those who work there. During some demonstrations, healthcare workers simulate their own deaths in public spaces, lying on the ground with a syringe symbolically pointed at their heads. Others stage scenes of suffocation to denounce working conditions that have become stifling.
These images are powerful, and at times shocking. Yet they reflect a reality that has been extensively documented in certain departments: excessive workloads, the inability to take breaks, a sense of time flying by, conflicting values, psychological distress, burnout, and even suicides. By exposing their vulnerability, healthcare workers break away from the heroic—yet dangerous—image of staff driven by a calling that transcends their physiological, psychological, and human needs.
They thus remind us that caregivers also need protection and that, when their occupational health deteriorates, patients bear the brunt of the consequences.
Declaring Your Love at a Public Hospital
Alongside these depictions of death, another symbol runs through the protests: love. Banners proclaiming “I love my hospital,” heart-shaped Post-it notes stuck to the walls, letters addressed to the public hospital in the style of love letters… Healthcare workers have invited citizens to express their attachment to this institution. This love is far from naive. It is deeply political. By declaring their love for the public hospital, citizens are asserting that healthcare is not merely a commercial service. They are reminding us that the hospital embodies values of solidarity, equality, and care for the most vulnerable.
Love then becomes an act of resistance: to love the public hospital is to refuse to let it be run solely on the basis of profitability.
A shared responsibility
These movements outline an ethic of life and death, in which care is conceived as a collective responsibility, relying both on public infrastructure and on human relationships that acknowledge our vulnerabilities and our universal interdependence. The acts of love, solidarity, and compassion highlighted in these movements remind us that care is not merely a technical act, but a human relationship grounded in attention to others.
The ethics of life and death as conceived in these movements also involves making care a public concern. That is to say, it involves a collective commitment to bringing to light what is usually kept hidden: vulnerable bodies, degrading situations, and the gradual decline of the public hospital system.
The crisis in public hospitals is not merely a management issue. It raises a fundamental question: what role do we want healthcare to play in our society? Do we accept that some lives are worth less than others simply because of a lack of resources? Or do we view healthcare as a common good that we must collectively preserve?
By drawing on the themes of death and love, caregivers invite society to reflect on what makes life worth living and what we are willing to do to preserve those conditions.
Ludivine Perray-Redslob, Associate Professor of Accounting, EM Lyon Business School; Agathe Morinière, Lecturer and Researcher, University of Montpellier and Nathalie Clavijo, PhD in Management Science, TBS Education
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Readthe original article.