The pressure on both hospitals and GPs has continued to mount with a triple-whammy of winter illnesses, leading medical staff to nickname this month "Black January".
After years of Covid, and with inflation biting, many say chronic staff shortages and increasing demands are making their work impossible and threatening the French health system.
Some hospitals are reporting up to 90% of their staff on "sick leave protest" at the conditions.
And France's second-largest health union has called an "unlimited walkout" this week, following a fortnight of strikes by French GPs.
Julia Venturini, eight years into her medical degree, joined a rally of GPs in Paris last week. "I made this choice [to be a GP] but now I have a lot of questions about my future," she says.
"We're all in the same boat, and the boat is now like the Titanic. When the emergency services go down, the GPs go down, and the hospitals go down - the health system in France is really cracking."
Julia says she and many of her classmates are considering whether to quit the profession entirely, or to try to work abroad.
The causes of France's healthcare crisis are complex, but the long-term pressure of an aging population alongside a shortage of medical staff was brought starkly into focus by the Covid pandemic.
The National Order of Nurses estimates that 40% of working nurses want to leave the profession, despite the government allocating an extra €12bn (£10.5bn) a year for hospital workers' salaries.
"The salaries are a little higher than before," Pauline told BBC. "But for a decent salary, you have to work nights and weekends, and that ends up exhausting people in the long term."
Pauline says fewer people are willing to work those kinds of hours now, especially when inflation is cutting into wages, and staff shortages mean more stressful shifts - a vicious cycle.
She describes being put in charge of 30 patients herself, as an overnight nurse. And says the lack of minimum staffing numbers outside intensive care units is putting patients and staff in danger.