While the lack of family doctors is a source of concern in the Jura, in Boncourt, the town has been welcoming a new practitioner for a little over two months. Doctor Barbara Loeliger took over the village medical practice after the sudden death of her predecessor last spring. The support of the municipal authorities was a trigger in this choice. “I found the town hall’s idea of helping a doctor to settle in very good and magnificent. It helped me, I couldn’t have done it on my own,” declares the doctor for whom it is important to “work” in a municipality and with a municipality. The fifty-year-old, who lives in Porrentruy, is delighted to follow families and learn their stories: “It makes this job not only interesting, it gives meaning. »
Desertification of rural areas
“I often say to my young colleagues who are looking for their specialty: being a family doctor means being a doctor for everything. Working as a specialist is more like being a medical technician. We focus on a technical problem,” explains Barbara Loeliger. The doctor is well aware that setting up alone in a medical office in a so-called peripheral region is not trivial. In addition to the complexity of the medical aspects and the distance from colleagues, we have to take care of the administrative side “which is enormous and takes a lot of time”. L’Ajoulote, who has worked in Bienne and New Zealand, also hopes to welcome another doctor into his office in order to train him.
Challenges galore
After the sudden death of his predecessor, the medical office remained closed for five months. Upon her arrival, Barbara Loeliger had to start by tidying up and sorting the numerous belongings with the help of her two medical assistants. Hours followed to understand how the different machines worked, to rehabilitate the computer equipment and to refill the stocks of medicines available in the propharmacy.
“The big challenge was that there was no one to pass the torch to me,” explains the doctor. After a little more than two months of opening, Barbara Loeliger met some of her new patients. She also had to refuse some who came from more distant villages. With a patient population estimated at 1000 people, the doctor only wishes to welcome residents of Boncourt, Buix and Montignez. From now on, the practitioner must concentrate on repatriating patient files which have been stored with the cantonal doctor. “You have to imagine, that’s 1000 files to read and it’s thirty minutes per file.” A long-term task that awaits Barbara Loeliger. /ncp
Swiss
