The deans of medical faculties have proposed the establishment of a “national medical service”, a system which would consist of having young qualified doctors practice for a year in areas under-resourced with practitioners. Professor Benoît Veber, president of the conference of deans of medicine, presented this idea during a conference entitled “Which doctors for tomorrow”, which was held at the Academy of Medicine.
According to him, this service would allow young doctors who have obtained their thesis to commit for a year to a region, particularly the one which trained them, in order to work in areas where there is a lack of practitioners. He specifies that this could be done in the form of a contract with incentive remuneration. “When a young doctor has his thesis in hand, he could contract for a year, be paid – and perhaps well paid – to go and practice in the region which trained him, for example in an under-dense territory,” said he added.
Responding to medical desertification
This proposal, according to Benoît Veber, would also represent “a way of returning to the mission of a doctor and giving back to the Nation what it has given it”. The objective is to respond to medical desertification by avoiding the introduction of restrictive measures, such as the obligation to settle in certain regions, an option which is currently being discussed by certain parliamentarians given the seriousness of the problem.
Patrice Diot, honorary dean of the Faculty of Medicine of Tours, also took the floor to explain that this initiative aims to anticipate the coercive solutions which risk being imposed on young doctors. He made particular reference to the old numerus clausus system, which long limited the number of medical students, and which contributed to the current shortage of practitioners in certain regions.
