Medical Reform

Medical Reform

Medical education reform is controversial, but the government’s bill has not yet been made public and will be on the agenda of a future cabinet. At the end of last year, Mrs Veil, Minister of Health, when she presented the global measures to make the social security accounts sustainable, had talked about the stabilization of the number of doctors. In 1982 there will be one doctor per 370 inhabitants and we will have reached the highest level of medical density in Europe. It seems possible to leave it at that, she said, and therefore to reduce the number of students admitted to the second year of university from now on. Since then, the medical education reform project has made progress. His outlines do not suit the medical students and they demonstrated today in Paris. Three major names in medicine, Professors SCHWARTZENBERG, MINKOWSKI and MILLIEZ, were concerned about the lack of consultation prior to the drafting of this bill. They want to sound the alarm because if the main concern is to reduce the number of doctors at all costs in order to reduce the costs of Social Security, these calculations are not admissible in conscience. The reform of the medical studies covers all the final cycles, it concerns the generalists and the specialists. Its ambition is to make medicine a real public service whose recruitment and training methods will increasingly depend on the needs of the population. Selection will be strengthened, the proportion of specialists will decrease as well as the number of personnel in certain disciplines (psychiatry or surgery). For the Ministry of Universities, this reform, which will primarily affect 36,000 students, will rehabilitate teaching. It will improve the relationship between specialists and generalists and will make it possible to reduce the number of city doctors and therefore prescribers of medical expenses by extending their studies by one year. All these arguments are refuted by student organizations which consider that this reform tends to set up a caste of specialists. It organizes studies but does not take programs into account. The council of the Order approving this reform, what weight will the professors hostile to this project have?

03

 

min

 

34

 

sec

File : Numerus clausus

Publication date : 3 April 1979