When you arrive for an internship at a new university hospital and the credentials from your previous university no longer work on SIDES NG, the situation quickly becomes a deadlock. It’s impossible to access educational resources, internship evaluations, or the e-logbook. The Sides Santé platform, hosted by UNESS, centralizes all these tools for health students and interns. However, one must understand the authentication mechanism, which depends as much on your university as on the platform itself.
Federated authentication on Sides Santé: what really holds things up
The most common problem does not come from SIDES NG itself. It stems from the federated authentication system used by French universities. Specifically, when you click on “Selection” to choose your institution, the platform redirects you to the authentication portal specific to each university.
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The expected credentials are those of the university intranet or student email. Not a specific account created for SIDES. If these credentials do not work, the blockage is on the university side, not the platform side.
Several situations generate this type of blockage:
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- A change of institution during the course (transitioning from externship to internship in another city) without reactivating the account by the new administration
- An automatic purge of inactive accounts, reinforced since the GDPR audits conducted in health universities between 2022 and 2024
- A poorly filled profile during the first login, which prevents association with the correct cohort or specialty
In these cases, you need to go back to the administration office or contact the data protection officer (DPO) of the university to reactivate access. You can also log in to Sides Santé via Santé Radieuse to find a detailed guide on the connection steps tailored to each situation.
Access to SIDES NG services: why the interface varies from one university to another
You notice it right from the first navigation: two interns in the same specialty, but at two different university hospitals, do not see the same tabs on SIDES NG. This is not a bug.
Each faculty activates the modules it wishes in the UNESS digital environment. Portfolios, internship evaluations, and the e-logbook only become visible after explicit activation by the local study coordination committee. One faculty may offer access to self-assessments from day one, while another may only open them halfway through the semester.
This operation is directly related to the gradual alignment of curricula with the DFGSM, DFASM, and the new third cycle of medical studies. The transition to SIDES NG has occurred in waves, and some functionalities are still being deployed depending on the institutions.
Check what is activated for your cohort
Before looking for a technical malfunction, the first thing to do is to check with your educational office which modules are actually open. Feedback varies on this point: some faculties communicate clearly at the beginning of the year, while others let students discover the interface on their own.
Accessing educational resources follows a specific path in the hierarchy: after logging in, you need to click on “Educational Resources,” then select UNESS, the field (Medicine, for example), and then “Course Library” (and not “Training Sessions,” which corresponds to another use).
First login to SIDES: the profile fields to fill in without error
The profile validation pop-up that appears during the very first login is an underestimated step. You fill it out quickly, validate it, and discover weeks later that your name or student number was incorrectly entered.
The accuracy of the profile information determines the association with your cohort. If the last name has an accent or a hyphen incorrectly entered, the system may not link you to the correct cohort. The result: missing resources, invisible evaluations, or an unvalidated internship in the e-logbook.
Here’s what we recommend checking during the first login:
- First and last name strictly identical to those registered by the administration (pay attention to compound first names and particles)
- Up-to-date student number, especially after a change of university
- Active university email address, as it serves as the recovery channel in case of future access issues
- Specialty and year of study correctly selected, otherwise you may not see the right modules
An error in these fields is not always directly correctable in the interface. Sometimes you need to go back to the university administration to request a reset of the SIDES profile.
Browser and mobile access to the Sides Santé platform
SIDES NG is a web application, accessible from any recent browser. In practice, it is observed that some older mobile browsers or ad-blocking extensions interfere with the redirection to the university authentication portal.
Using an updated browser and temporarily disabling blockers resolves most issues of blank pages or login loops. On mobile, using the system’s default browser (Safari on iOS, Chrome on Android) yields the most reliable results.
If the connection fails nonetheless, clearing the browser’s cache and cookies often helps to unblock the situation. The federated redirection stores temporary authentication tokens that may conflict with a previous session.
When the problem persists
If access remains impossible after all these checks, the point of contact remains your university’s IT service, not UNESS directly. The national platform does not manage individual accounts: it is the institution that assigns and maintains access rights.
Keeping a written record of each exchange with the administration or IT service facilitates resolution, especially during the start of the academic year when requests accumulate. An email specifying your student number, your field, and a screenshot of the error message significantly speeds up processing.