Published on
Updated
Reading 2 min.
in collaboration with
Dr Gérald Kierzek (Medical Director of Doctissimo)
Will parents soon be able to do without a certificate to stay at home with a sick child? This is what an amendment voted for on October 25 in the Senate proposes. An idea which would aim to relieve congestion in medical practices in the simplest cases.
Running to your doctor when your child wakes up with gastroenteritis, to justify your absence to your employer, could soon be over. According to an amendment passed last week in the Senate as part of the proposed law on access to care, the requested medical certificate could be replaced by a simple sworn statement from the parent, to stay at home.
A sworn statement to free up medical time?
For the parliamentarians of the Palais du Luxembourg, the measure, unexpected, would correspond “to the expectations of doctors in terms of reducing unnecessary medical certificates”.
“The commission believes that it could free up effective medical time for the benefit of patients, time which is so precious in a context of dwindling healthcare provision”declared Senator Corinne Imbert, rapporteur of the text.
Information applauded by Agnès Gianotti, president of the MG France union, the majority among general practitioners in Capital: “We’ve been asking for this for a long time.” arguing that doctors spend, on average each week, between an hour and a half and two hours on requests for medical certificates for all reasons. Same appreciation for Luc Duquesnel, president of the general practitioners section at the Confederation of French Medical Unions (CSMF) which targets lost time particularly in winter:
“We often have the case of a child who has gastro or a slight temperature and cannot go to daycare. The parents could very well treat them themselves but ask for a consultation in order to have this medical certificate to hand. hand it over to their employer. We’re walking on our heads.”
“Medicine is about examining patients”
Although practical, L’However, this announcement is not unanimous among the medical profession. For Jérôme Marty, general practitioner in Haute-Garonne and president of the French Union for Free Medicine (UFML), the amendment is unsuitable and “comes from a lack of knowledge of the field.
Dr. Gérald Kierzek, medical director of Doctissimo, returns to an essential message that this announcement seems to forget:
“Yes, it may seem complicated to have an emergency doctor, especially when it is just a question of having a medical certificate for fever or gastro. But the medical consultation is not done just to have a certificate. It is also and above all used to know how the child is doing, and to check if he or she does not have appendicitis for example, and not gastroenteritis. This should undoubtedly be remembered, but good medicine requires examining the people. When a certificate is needed, we give them within this framework, but as a result of the diagnosis. The certificate should not be an end in itself.”
A problem announced with the employers?
It also remains that this solution of attestation on honor can also pose a problem for employers. According to a lawyer specializing in labor law cited by Capital: “The employer can more easily have doubts, more doors open to suspicion about the legitimacy of the absence.
For the moment, this adoption does not yet have a start date: the Valletoux bill, in which this amendment should appear, must now be the subject of a joint joint committee with the deputies.