PORTRAITS – These doctors who take turns each week to provide consultations in Ajain, in Creuse

For the first time in its history, Ajain will have two doctors. A second general practitioner is due to arrive at the medical centre from this Monday, September 23. This commune in Creuse was, two years ago, the first in France to open a health center where general practitioners from all over the country take turns to provide consultations. Among them: Dr. Gérard Van Melckebeke. He was a general practitioner in Aube, near Troyes, for almost 30 years. Retired for two years, he came to Ajain for the first time a year ago, in September 2023, and returns regularly every two or three months : “In the current situation of a shortage of general practitioners in France, it’s strange to say to ourselves, we’re in good shape and we’re stopping when we could be contributing something to the population.”

With this system, he found his account: “We are employees, we are by appointment so we have time to consult patients. We are relieved of all administrative tasks, we only do medicine. I have rediscovered the enthusiasm of my beginnings. The patients are very demanding. Some had not been followed for years so we take charge of them again and we feel really useful.”

Feeling useful by working against medical desertsthis is also what motivates Dr Christian Reuillard, 54 years old, a liberal general practitioner in Haute Saône. “We constantly hear about doctors who don’t get involved. Here, I had the opportunity to get involved to the right extent, neither too much nor too little. This is the part I can give in the situation I am currently in, still active with a lot of work where I am. Where I work, we created a health center that made it possible to respond to this situation. We are lucky to be able to easily find replacements. The idea for me was that by going to work in Ajain, I was not going to abandon my patients, they were going to be taken care of by colleagues and replacements.” Christian Reuillard came to Ajain twice and gives a week of his time each year at a Médecins Solidaires center: “We only see people we’ve never seen before, it’s an intellectual investment to do initial consultations all day long. It’s tiring but it’s a bit of a challenge of the experience, we get out of our comfort zone a bit, it’s part of our job.”

Seeing new patients all the time is already the daily life of Dr. Elsa Leclercq, replacement doctor in Nantes. She doesn’t want to settle down so this system allows her to work on her own scale: “When you’re a replacement, you can feel guilty about not settling in. You feel like the only way to get involved in fighting medical deserts is to screw a plaque in a village and not move. Until now, there wasn’t a way of working that suited me. Now, you can get involved by doing things differently.” She was one of the first doctors to provide consultations in Ajain.

Today, the collective counts 500 general practitionerss who take turns in the four health centers of doctors in solidarity. Two more openings are planned by the end of the year, in Haute Vienne and in Indre.