They said stop: the doctors of a health practice in Nueil-les-Aubiers, in Deux-Sèvres, chose to cease activity until Monday, November 18, after death threats against one of them Thursday morning. A patient was more than virulent by telephone at the switchboard, threatening to kill one of the practitioners. “The patient called to make an appointment except that it had already gone badly the first time with my colleague and he had decided to end the follow-up”, says Sandrine Pignon, general practitioner at the health center. The secretary therefore explains to him that it is not possible to make an appointment. “If I remember correctly he said anyway I have nothing left to lose, I have already been in prison, I have already killed and I can do it again and he warned that he would move later -noon”, continues the practitioner. A complaint was filed.
“More and more pressure”
Overall, Doctor Sandrine Pignon notes that the context is increasingly tense. “People are having more and more trouble getting appointments. It’s difficult to get slots, because we have few places, so I think they are more and more stressed,” she explains. “We are under more and more pressure because we always have to add a patient between two others, we work more and faster. There are incessant requests for prescriptions that we make on our lunch break, we prescribe everything the patients ask us. We can't stand the paperwork anymore, the patients who put pressure on usand we said stop.”
The healthcare professional deplores facing more and more frequently “of the threatening patients to file a complaint against us“. “What I find more and more difficult to bear is the demands to complete this, do that, I have the impression that we have become a business where the customer is king, deplores Sandrine Pignon. For us, the goal is not for the patient to come out happy to have had the antibiotic they wanted or their gym certificate: we decide to treat a particular pathology if necessary, to fill out a particular form of paper if it is necessary. 'is obligatory, and that's it.'
