The social movement which began this Monday in certain city offices intends to ask for a doubling of the price of the consultation.
From this Monday, December 26 and until January 2, liberal doctors are called upon to close their practices. The objective of this strike? Ask for a doubling of the price of the basic consultation, which the strikers want to see go from 25 to 50 euros. But also an improvement in their working conditions.
Some liberal doctors, members of the “Doctors for tomorrow” collective, are worried about a questioning of their freedom of installation, while the executive wishes to fight against medical deserts, and more generally to highlight their working conditions. , which they consider bad.
“It’s really not the time”
This social movement, which was not relayed by the main trade unions, comes at a crucial time for the French health system. The hospital is facing a triple epidemic – of Covid-19, influenza and bronchiolitis – and the emergency room is saturated in many French hospitals.
“It’s really not the time, when we are in a terrible situation. It’s not that we are saturated, we are oversaturated”, explains Patrick Pelloux, president of the association of emergency doctors in France.
Last week, in the columns of Sunday newspaperthe Minister of Health François Braun had called on the liberal doctors tempted by the strike to “responsibility”.
“Without questioning the right to strike, I call for responsibility, because the period between Christmas and New Year is always complicated,” he said.
Frédéric Adnet, head of emergencies at the Avicenne hospital, in Bobigny (Seine-Saint-Denis), evokes an “explosion of pathologies”, which weighs on the number of patients presenting to the emergency room. A situation aggravated by the shortage of city doctors, and the strike movement.
“These are mostly patients who come for simple consultations. These are not real emergencies, but since they cannot find a doctor in the department, they come to the emergency room,” he explains.
“We have to be united”
Same observation in Hénin-Beaumont (Pas-de-Calais). Arnaud Chiche, an anesthesiologist in the northern town, evokes massive deprogramming in the hospital where he officiates, faced with the inability to juggle between emergency hospitalizations and those which are planned. He nevertheless says he understands the strike movement initiated by some of his liberal colleagues.
“We have to be united,” he says on the set of BFMTV.
The anesthesiologist recalls that general practitioners are an “indispensable entity”, which makes it possible to avoid numerous visits to the emergency room when they are consulted by their patients. Responding to the city medicine crisis would thus make it possible to respond in part to the emergency crisis. “The story is whether the executive is contemplating, or whether we are going to make decisions”, supports Arnaud Chiche.
One hour wait to consult SOS Médecins
The crisis in city medicine, aggravated by the strike which began on Monday, is also being felt at SOS Médecins, an emergency medical service at home. Interviewed by BFMTV, Dr. Urfan Ashraf, vice-president of the organization, mentioned an hour of waiting for people wishing to contact the service last week.
Currently, SOS Médecins receives 6,000 calls a day, but can only take 3,000. In the end, 1,500 procedures are performed daily. Urfan Ashraf cites three factors to explain the wave of demands currently facing his service: the triple epidemic, the very significant hospital pressure, and the strike of liberal doctors.
SOS Solidarity Doctors
But here again, we want to show solidarity with the liberal colleagues on strike.
“We are united in saying that medicine is in crisis”, indicates on BFMTV Serge Smadja, secretary general of SOS Médecins.
“The system can no longer collect, we are demanding all possible means”, confides the health professional, who demands that the acts carried out at home be specifically upgraded. But no desire to strike for the moment, given the gravity of the current situation.
“Even if we completely associate ourselves with the demands, we, at SOS Médecins, have decided to continue our activity. We are living through an epidemic situation. In the whole of my career, I have never known so many patients with a demand for care at this time of year”, he explains.
