Dr François Richard is one of those doctors who, after permanently closing the door to their practice, decides to continue practicing. Because it is difficult for them to bear going from the overflow of the waiting room to the overflow of retirement.
As you pass through the grey gate, you see a lawn with separate mowing areas – for the sake of preserving biodiversity –, a removable chicken coop, a greenhouse. So Dr François Richard would be spending his cool retirement cultivating his garden in Chapelon, a town of less than three hundred inhabitants?
General practitioner since 1989 in Corbeilles-en-Gâtinais
The general practitioner had been practicing since 1989 a few kilometers away, in Corbeilles-en-Gâtinais, east of the Loiret. In six years, he had seen twelve of his colleagues leave within a 20 kilometer radius. He paid the price, he, the doctor of the old school who did not know how to refuse access to his waiting room. “I can’t imagine telling someone who has a temperature of 39°C, come in three weeks!”, he told us.
Nearly 4,500 files filled the metal lockers in his office and the memory of his computer. While a general practitioner’s patient base has around 800 names on average.
The difficult daily life of a country doctor isolated in the medical desert of Loiret
Not a relief, a “punishment”
So this retirement? Finally some time for yourself? The possibility of going to the bakery without being harassed for an examination? François Richard wore a mask during our meeting in 2022, for fear of contamination. His face is no longer hidden, but a mask marks the features of his face. “I experienced retirement as a punishment,” he says, inviting us to sit on a sofa in his living room. He smiles: “I left on April 1st, it’s not a joke!”
“It’s like mourning, perhaps a refusal to grow old. Work is a powerful drug. The day you stop, you have to fill the void.”
Dr François Richard (Retired general practitioner)
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The choice of reason
At 67, the GP was old enough to claim his retirement rights. He would have liked to play for extra time, but his wife was against it. So was reason. “The replacement doctors I had in recent years both died of heart attacks.”
So, he decided to leave his office which he had to empty (he was renting the premises). He was only able to transmit part of the files to his colleagues. The majority of his patients no longer have a treating doctor. Like around 30% of the inhabitants of Loiret.
Free time, too big a void to fill
Cultivating your garden is not enough to keep a general practitioner busy in retirement.
He returns periodically to Corbeilles-en-Gâtinais, only to collect from a post office box the medical mail which continues to be intended for him, “while being discreet, so as not to be harassed”. But he misses the contact.
“I used to see forty to fifty people a day in my office, now I see zero.”
Dr François Richard
Sometimes he doesn’t even have the courage to get up to have breakfast with his wife, a pharmacist, who will only retire in three years. “We talk a lot about free time, we make you believe that it’s important,” he denounces. Hence his desire to continue exercising, at a lighter pace, while waiting for his wife to put her blouse back on.
Two doctors will be recruited to practice in two villages in Loiret
No job fatigue
Was he not tired of this waiting room which was always full? Having to close the shutters of your office an hour before leaving to deter new entries? The GP says no. What bothered him the most, at the end of his career, was logistics, computer problems in particular. It’s not easy to get help about twenty kilometers from a town.
Knowledge to exploit
Caring must have been a vocation for this general practitioner, one imagines. “Not really,” contradicts Dr. François Richard. If he chose this profession, it was mainly because his parents dreamed of it for him. They were teachers and he points out with pride that he was part of this first generation to take the Hippocratic Oath without being the son of a doctor. Not without sacrifice. “When my friends went to a discotheque, I worked on my classes.”
The generalist has a sense of values. “Becoming a doctor requires a great intellectual investment, I have the feeling that it is a waste not to continue to use all this knowledge.” Especially since the medical need is significant in the Loiret.
Soon to be an employed doctor
What makes François Richard smile again is the prospect of soon putting the stethoscope around his neck again. Two and a half days a week for three years. He will work as an employee of the Canals et Forêts en Gâtinais community of communes, in Ladon. Still a village (1,400 inhabitants), and still alone since there is no longer a practitioner in the practice which was bought by the municipality. A formula that suits him, and that he can’t wait to find again – the opening of the health center will probably take place in September.
“If I didn’t have this plan as a salaried doctor, it wouldn’t work at all.” He will be well received, the inhabitants of Ladon are also eager to find a doctor.
Philippe Abline
