Irène Georgescu: There’s no point in rushing to get far

When asked to start from the beginning, Irène Georgescu enjoys recalling that she spent her first four years at the University of Montpellier (UM), two in pharmacy and two in law. Such candor comes all the more easily since the professor at Montpellier Management has nothing left to prove. In addition to her many responsibilities, including heading the Social Sciences division at UM and serving as editor-in-chief of the Journal of Health Management and Economics, she has just secured European funding Research Innovation Action grant of 5.6 million euros for the international Apollo project.

This introduction, however, is not false modesty on the part of someone who expresses her gratitude to an academic system that allowed her to“search for herself for a long time” and begin her dissertation at age 32. Her hesitations in the early years—between working at an accounting firm and teaching at a private post-secondary institution—ultimately led to a straight path toward an academic career. With her doctorate in hand after three years, she secured a position as a lecturer, followed shortly thereafter by the agrégation in Management Sciences, enabling her to become a professor in Nice. And in the process, she managed to return to Montpellier, a home base that this Frenchwoman of Romanian origin had no intention of leaving behind.

Return Logic

In a twist of fate, the doctoral project in management she began in 2007 focused on the hospital setting—a field this daughter of a family of doctors saysshe “did everything to avoid.” At the time, France was in the midst of reforming its hospital activity-based pricing system, and Irène Georgescu examined how the new evaluation tools were affecting healthcare professionals. And she observed their many dysfunctional effects:“Performance evaluations as they currently exist create role conflicts, stress, and a loss of emotional commitment among professionals in public hospitals, all in the name of a logic of efficiency and financial performance…”

This hospital environment, which has become such a central part of her life, will remain the focus of her research. And while the researcher is interested in the resilience of hospital staff, the succession of crises gives her food for thought: COVID-19, of course, along with the lack of recognition expressed by some of the professionals interviewed regarding the efforts they made, but also the effects of climate change, with its share of heat waves and floods.

Networking and Guts

The European Apollo project addresses the issue of healthcare professionals’ resilience but on a larger scale. Irène Georgescu, visibly moved, is still savoring the pleasant surprise of having been selected as one of the four projects chosen. Put together in just a few months, the project brings together eight universities and three university hospitals, including the Montpellier and Nîmes University Hospitals. When asked how she managed to do it so quickly, she replies,“networking, casting a wide net, and a bit of nerve”—which was necessary to secure a partnership with Massachusetts General Hospital, a Harvard-affiliated hospital. But likely also a lot of overtime.“We really work a lot,” admits the woman who also holds teaching responsibilities across nine different degree programs.“And that’s true for my entire team,” she adds, clearly delighted with the quality of her professional relationships.

Human values that she would like to incorporate into the performance metrics imposed on hospitals,“where current tools focus on volume and only partially reflect the work of healthcare professionals, which is difficult to assess. As a doctor once told me, ‘We’re not here to sell detergent and bolts—we’re here for the patients.’”

And what better way to put forward new proposals than through a collaboration and a visiting position at a prestigious Ivy League university ? Irène Georgescu knows the battle isn’t won yet, but she hopes to be able to advance her ideas.