The project 99 Caregivers (99 Soignant.e.s in French) started mid-January with the first writing workshops organized at the Timone Hospital and the Nord Hospital of Marseille.
Marseille, February 2025 – The project 99 Soignant.e.s began in mid-January with the first writing workshops organized at Timone Hospital and Nord Hospital. These sessions bring together professionals from the four AP-HM sites in Marseille, representing various healthcare disciplines, including general care and operating room nurses, nursing assistants, radiology technicians, laboratory technicians, healthcare managers, midwives, speech therapists, sign language interpreters, and psychologists. This diversity is a significant asset to the project, creating a stimulating environment for exchange and allowing participants to engage with colleagues they rarely encounter in their daily work. The first phase is dedicated to writing. The creative prompts resonate deeply with caregivers as they explore their work environment, practices, human relationships, and how care influences their perspectives. The aim is to bear witness to experiences but in a way that moves beyond conventional narratives, allowing language and literary forms to express raw emotions. This shift enables a fresh approach to testimony, providing a means to articulate the hospital experience with more fluid and embodied language. Participants begin to observe their surroundings differently, interpreting the expressions of patients, analyzing the gestures of care, and noticing the variations in the work atmosphere with a heightened sensitivity. This approach empowers each caregiver to find their voice. Through writing, they discover an alternative way to express, share, and convey the complexities of care, balancing technical aspects with humanity. When the participants read their texts aloud, it becomes a valuable opportunity to appreciate the uniqueness of each perspective while reflecting on a shared experience.
Thus, listening, omnipresent, is expressed in a thousand nuances, as essential as medical gestures:
- Listening to understand, reformulate, and translate.
- Listening is a diagnostic tool for building a relationship of trust.
- Listening to silences, emotions, unspoken things.
“Listen in order and disorder. Listen between the words, between the tears, between the lines. Listen to the silences and the silences between the silences. […]
Listen so that words can be taken, resonate, slam, pierce, rock. Listen so that it moves, that it lives inside, that it resounds, rebounds, that it weaves, that it binds, that it connects, that it dispossesses, separates, repairs, listen so that…..rest.
Listen because speaking makes one stronger, makes one truer, makes one more beautiful, makes one unique. Listen because it honors.”
Excerpt from Isabelle’s text. P
The writing workshops will conclude at the end of February, allowing for composition to begin in early March. During this phase, the creative team led by Geneviève Flaven will integrate the texts from the workshops into a cohesive narrative that resonates with the audience.
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