Health professionals, but also residents and elected officials, are invited to reflect and discuss the installation of caregivers in rural areas, in Chéniers, in Creuse, Saturday July 6.
“Does the installation of doctors still have a future” in our countryside? This question posed directly is the title of the third meetings dedicated to rural medicine, which will take place at the Chéniers Culture and Leisure Center on July 6. An event proposed by Doctor Claude Landos, who works at the Multiprofessional Health Center (MSP) of La Celle-Dunoise, and Doctor René Nicolas, president of the network of caregivers in the north of Creuse, Marche Pro Santé.
Professional workshops in the morning
“As part of this meeting, it is the health professionals who raise this question regarding the installation of caregivers. They come together to respond to it and find solutions that could be implemented to attract some of their colleagues in the rural sector,” says Jean Chezeaubernard, representative of the local development association Déclic nord Creuse, partner of the event alongside the Guéret hospital center, the Association of Rural Mayors of France and a dozen other organizations, including the Creuse Primary Health Insurance Fund.
While medical desertification tends to be considered an incurable disease for many residents and elected officials in rural areas, the promoters of these meetings insist that decision-makers be more attentive to their proposals. As Sylanda Laurent, general practitioner in the town of Genouillac and deputy secretary of Marche Pro Santé, defends:
We have ideas. And it is absolutely necessary for the institutions to hear them. They must finally direct funding towards concrete actions
Thus, on July 6, in Chéniers, around thirty health stakeholders (doctors, nurses, pharmacists, interns, etc.) will be invited to make their diagnoses and propose ready-to-use actions, as part of reflection workshops, from 10 a.m. to 12:30 p.m.
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Work on attractiveness
“We want to take care of the caregiver’s environment,” summarizes Sylanda Laurent. Which inevitably involves a focus on the notion of “attractiveness”. By wondering “why a professional will want to settle in an area to practice there”, adds Julien Villegente, general practitioner at the Guéret hospital center.
Multiple levers are mentioned: highlighting a living environment, job opportunities for caregivers’ spouses, promoting the leisure and service offerings available… But the “different forms of possible installations,” adds Julien Villegente. And this with the aim of best meeting the expectations of patients and caregivers. “For example, today, doctors practice both partly in a hospital environment and in private practice,” he continues.
Through the voice of Rémi Bouquet, internist doctor at the Guéret CH, the organizers of the meetings also insist on the “complementarity” and the “solidarity” which exists between “city medicine and hospital medicine”, two modes of exercise “ faced with the same deficiencies in terms of personnel and financial resources.
Debates open to all in the afternoon
If the day of July 6 will primarily mobilize caregivers, it is also aimed at the general public, elected officials and institutions. Thus, everyone is invited to the restitution of the workshops and to participate in a time of discussion, from 2:15 p.m. to 4 p.m.
The whole thing will be filmed and broadcast live on You Tube, in the hope of reaching as many people as possible. And, perhaps, encourage new health professionals to install their plates in our villages.
Francois Delotte
