Dominique Bontoux took a ” turn “and not just geographical: by leaving the south of France to settle in Montceau-les-Mines (Saône-et-Loire), this general practitioner also turned her back on twenty years of private practice to let yourself be tempted by salaried practice, in the middle of the medical desert, in a health center. “One day in 2018, I found a brochure in my mailbox, the Saône-et-Loire department was calling for general practitioners, pulling out all the stops to bring them in…” Schedules and fixed salaries, teamwork, medical secretarial work… What is proposed, on paper, to him ” speak “ and resonates with an increasingly daily life “harassing”.
But it was the fact of having fallen ill herself that won her decision. “As a freelancer, I did much more than full time; from now on, I would have the possibility of working part-time. Before, I started at 8 a.m., without knowing when the day would end; I was constantly bothered by phone calls, administration, accounting, etc. As an employee, I would be able to be relieved of these tasks and concentrate on my core business: patients. Without that, it’s simpleshe confides, I would never have gone back to work. »
Léa Schleck, for her part, “everything changed without moving” : it was within the walls of her office in Labry (Meurthe-et-Moselle) where she had worked alone for three years already, that this general practitioner successfully opened a health center in 2022. With, for “trigger”, she said, the Covid-19 crisis. “I have always been uncomfortable with the idea that the place of care, the examination table, the equipment belong to the doctorreports the thirty-something. For me, who has never been driven by liberal dynamics, who does not have the soul of a business manager, the place of care belongs first and foremost to the patients. »
The 1,600 inhabitants of the village benefited from this. Three general practitioners can now receive them, as well as two nurses and two salaried medical assistants, like Léa Schleck, through the town hall. She herself came out of a “exponential logistics management” and a growing feeling of“isolation”.
“New relationship to the profession”
For the two doctors, is this choice a reaction to the crisis in liberal practice, to the “devaluation” denounced by their liberal colleagues, whose representative organizations are in the process of renegotiating their conditions of practice and remuneration with Health Insurance? Both refuse to “oppose” one model to another. “It is also a symptom of a more global changereplies Dr. Schleck, of a new relationship to the profession. »
You have 80% of this article left to read. The rest is reserved for subscribers.