Medicine failures soon to be fished out to be sent to medical deserts ? This is what this Corrèze elected official is proposing

Students who fail in their second year to be “drafted” on condition of committing to work for ten years in a medical desert. ILLUSTRATION – ARNAUD MONNIER

To fight against medical deserts, Frédérique Meunier, LR MP for Corrèze, proposes to give a second chance to certain medical students who failed in the second year in exchange for a commitment to practice for ten years in a rural area.

Offer a "second chance" to medical students who failed the competitive examination, in exchange for a commitment to become a general practitioner and to work in a medical desert: here is the bill tabled by the MP LR Frédérique Meunier, who details her idea at the microphone of our colleagues from France Bleu Limousin.

The objective: to fight against medical deserts in so-called “tense” rural areas. Frédérique Meunier suggests  "refish" medical students narrowly failed – "by 0.2 or 0.3 points" – in the second year, on the condition that they agree to work for ten years in general medicine in a rural area where there is a shortage of practitioners.

Prevent young people from turning abroad

With this proposal, the LR MP for Corrèze hopes to prevent "young people from going abroad, which we are seeing more and more more, and we go look for them afterwards".

A measure which opens the way to limiting doctors' freedom of installation. "If we do nothing, we see all our territories […] we see it in rural areas, with doctors disappearing, the attractiveness of our territories means that we will little by little deflate like balloons and die", maintains the’elected one.

Medical students would commit to settling in for ten years "because that corresponded to the number of years of training studies, now it can be less, it can perhaps open up to other specialties like dentists. The bill can be amended, but the main thing is that it can exist", concludes Frédérique Meunier.