Figures de la violence et rapport au métier. Approche comparative de la victimation de professionnels de santé français et roumains

This article seeks to shed light on the figures of violence in the health sector in two specific national contexts: the North, in France, and Bucharest, in Romania. The population at the heart of this research being that of health professionals has led to a questioning of the relationship to the profession in connection with its qualification of violence. This questioning was constructed by mobilising the tools of interactionist sociology – and doing so comprehensively. It was with this same aim in mind that a victimization survey was carried out, allowing us to collect 719 questionnaires from health professionals working in health and medical-social institutions. The first major result is the determining role of the relationship to the profession in understanding the logic at work in qualifying violence in the situations concerned. The results thus produced show that the situations producing victimization crystallize around the user/professional relationships. The second major result is the appearance of real specificities according to the national context, resulting from a markedly differentiated relationship with users and pathologies. In Romania, victimizations are “incidents at the door”, while in France they are at the heart of care, but in both cases they call “relationships of service” into question.