Julien Cottet, allergist in Chartres and president of the council of the Order of doctors of Eure-et-Loir, compares the announcements of the Prime Minister to “window dressing”.
Are you satisfied with the announcements of Jean Castex, who has undertaken to create a faculty of medicine in Orléans, in addition to that of Tours, and to train 200 additional students in the Center-Val de Loire region?
This is another fine example of demagoguery. Two months before the presidential election, we are getting out of our hats an increase in the number of medical students, when we are not in a position to train them.
Prime Minister Jean Castex undertakes to open a faculty of medicine in Orléans
In my promotion, in 2004, we were 130 in the first year of medicine in Tours. Currently, there are 300 of them and we don’t have more hospitals and internship supervisors than twenty years ago. We have a serious problem with training.
What are these problems?
The interns trained in the Centre-Val de Loire region are in difficulty, because there are too many of them in the same departments. We need to stop lying to people. We do not have the capacity to increase to 500 students.
Julien Cottet (president of the departmental council of the Order of Physicians of Eure-et-Loir)
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And then at the end of their studies, they will settle where they want. We are not sure that they will stay in the region.
Should we put an end to the freedom of establishment of doctors?
We cannot regulate a shortage. Coercion would be worse. Young people would no longer settle as liberals and would go into paid employment. It must be understood that medical deserts are no longer limited to rural areas.
The same policies, left and right, which have increased the numerus clausus for years, have created different installation aids depending on the territory.
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Young people will settle in the countryside to receive the bonuses. In Eure-et-Loir, two medical deserts have been created, in Dreux and Chartres, where more than 20% of the inhabitants have no attending physician.
Why the medical desert has further gained ground in Eure-et-Loir
What other remedies do you recommend to fight against medical deserts?
It takes twelve years to train a doctor. Today, too many patients have no attending physician.
People need care quickly. Short-term measures should be taken, such as the transfer of skills to pharmacists or nurses.
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There should also be a shock of administrative simplification for doctors. Task delegation is one of the ways to get out of it as quickly as possible
What do you think of the project of the City of Orléans which wants to establish a partnership with the University of Zagreb, in Croatia, to train doctors in Orléans?
You have to have some nerve to snatch doctors from Zagreb. The Croats also need treatment. It’s a colonialist attitude that shocks me.
Helen Bonnet
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