Capturing ‘Each and Every Moment” of nurses in training

A W-o-W film evening contrasted vocational guidance films with "Each and Every Moment", a heartfelt documentary by Nicolas Philibert on training of nurses at the La Croix Saint-Simon hospital in the suburbs of Paris.

In the second part of the W‑o-W film evening on the nursing pro­fes­si­on, docu­men­ta­ry filmmaker Nicolas Philibert (Etre et avoir/To be and to have, FR, 2002) takes a radically sub­jec­ti­ve look at the training of nurses in a teaching hospital in Montreuil, in the greater Paris area. “Each and Every Moment” (De chaque instant, FR 2018) can be read as a counter-position to the fact-based, mostly sober voca­tio­nal guidance films of the first part of our film evening.  Zwischen Wirk­lich­keit und Werbung. Berufs­in­f­o­fil­me zur Kran­ken­pfle­ge im Wandel der Zeit

In a training room, white-clad young people fran­ti­cal­ly press on an arti­fi­cial torso to practice CPR chest com­pres­si­ons. The camera calmly watches as a student nurse describes his fear of admi­nis­te­ring the first stab to his colleague as she nervously sticks the hypo­der­mic needle into a dummy during a “dry run.”

Nicolas Philibert takes viewers right into the exciting first days of a class of student nurses. We can feel the exci­te­ment in the chat­te­ring and euphoria of the eth­ni­cal­ly diverse group as a young man, holding another training torso of a woman in labor as a demons­tra­ti­on model between his legs, learning about the reality of child­birth while being guided by the inst­ruc­tor who imitates the con­trac­tions at speed. From amusing and frenetic scenes of this kind, Philibert cuts to the drab lecturing of a teacher who virtually hammers the code of ethics for nurses into the students.

Images, language and sounds has an immediate effect on the viewer. The director refrains from any com­men­ta­ry, he does not classify, he does not evaluate, he does not explain anything. He leaves us, in the best sense, alone with the trainees and that, I have the feeling, it makes us empathize with them more pro­found­ly. We laugh at the clumsy attempts at drawing blood and when the students make mistakes on their first hospital practice patients, it worries us too.

With the practice semester, we arrive at the second part of the film. The often harsh daily routine of the hospital puts pressure on the newcomers. We notice that some can handle it rea­son­ab­ly well, others are close to despair. The empa­the­tic young man who chain-smokes ciga­ret­tes while listening to the pseudo-infor­ma­ti­ve stories of the psych­iatric patients on the large terrace of the clinic will probably have found his vocation.

Yet, when we follow the feedback con­ver­sa­ti­ons that make up the third part of the film, one doubts whether certain students are on the right track at all.  Training super­vi­sors or mentors empa­the­ti­cal­ly but sternly analyze the progress of the training, the deficits of the can­di­da­tes and discuss their sui­ta­bi­li­ty within the field of nursing after the exam. When one student fights for her future, it gets under our skin, also because Nicolas Philibert’s framing is so close. And that’s exactly what makes “Each and Every Moment” so special for me: a film in which you get close to people.

In Nicolas Phi­li­ber­t’s film, there is no nursing crisis, no question of financing the health care system, no political criticism, not even the dif­fi­cul­ties in recrui­t­ing nursing staff. We only meet people, students and teachers alike, with their different tem­pe­ra­ments and talents, and thus gain a deep insight into the practice of training nurses. In contrast to voca­tio­nal guidance films, which are committed clear goals and purpose, docu­men­ta­ry films, are allowed to do so: taking a stand.