(TRIBUNE) On October 13, all doctors’ unions called for closing practices in order to initiate new negotiations with Social Security and re-discuss the constraints of a new bill. Richard Talbot and Frédéric Villeneuve of the Fédération des Médecins de Europe published an article on TipsForWomens explaining the reasons for this unprecedented strike.
“On October 13, private medicine stops. No return date”
How did we get here ?
The profession is tired, aging, discredited.
Faced with permanent contradictory injunctions:
- Take care of more patients BUT don’t increase sick leave;
- Consider suffering at work BUT don’t arrest patients;
- Use the most modern treatments BUT do not cost society too much;
- Group yourself into multi-professional firms BUT set up where even the State and the public service are disengaged;
- Do not settle in tourist areas BUT meet the needs of a population multiplied by 10 in summer;
- Monitor your chronic patients BUT meet the growing demand for unscheduled care;
- Spend more time with your patients BUT participate in reflection missions by organizing the CPTS.
Doctors are men and women like any other. They exercise a difficult profession, for which they have studied extensively and sacrificed part of their youth, but which remains a profession, and not a priesthood. We are at the service of patients and their health, we are not their servants.
Every day we face shortages of essential medicines, difficulties in making appointments for imaging or specialists, and the impossibility of hospitalization due to lack of hospital places and staff, which lead to delays in treatment. sometimes catastrophic.
We are under attack from all sides: patient associations, consumer associations, deputies. Everyone asks us to do more, to broaden our missions, to spend more time at work… without giving us the means to do so.
The date of October 13 was not chosen at random: it is the date of presentation to the Senate of the Valletoux-Garrot bill., already voted on at first reading in the National Assembly, and which multiplies the constraints for the liberals: constraint on installation, constraint of participation in permanent care, constraint of participation in the CPTS, constraint of early declaration of cessation of activity, constraint of delegation of tasks without delegation of responsibility. Don’t throw away any more, the cup is full!
We want to transform our medical practice, from a patient-doctor dialogue, to care by a team in which the doctor is no longer a real caregiver, but the coordinator of a host of various performers: assistants, secretaries , paramedics, pharmacists. This is not the job we learned and were trained to do.
The Covid crisis was a revelation for many: we were asked a lot, we took on a lot, we organized ourselves, we were reactive, we invented solutions, we added vaccination slots in our schedules, we we adopted new ways of practicing by investing in teleconsultations, we trained in screening, we educated and explained tirelessly… only to end up being blamed for the slippage in health spending.
Doctors therefore legitimately asked themselves the question of their commitment. Is it normal in the society of 35 hours and paid leave to have to work 55 hours? to work nights and weekends without compensatory rest? to continue their activity well beyond retirement age?
Ask yourself just one question: why does a profession which theoretically combines all the advantages: consideration, independence, high remuneration, see its numbers inexorably decline, no longer attract young people and see older people flee? towards retirement or a less remunerative but easier salaried job?
The movement of private doctors, contrary to what we have read, is not a corporatist movement solely centered on financial considerations. It is above all the expression of the despair of a profession which no longer has the means to carry out its missions and cannot make itself heard.