Several unions have signed an agreement with Medicare which will change the rules for young graduates in physiotherapy. What trigger the anger of some students who would be concerned.
This agreement, signed a few days ago by unions and Medicare, provides that from 2027, graduate students in physiotherapy will have to work for two years in places that are under-endowed with physiotherapists. This concerns hospitals, nursing homes, medical deserts.
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What trigger the anger of some students, like Maëlis André. The vice-president of the National Federation of Physiotherapy Students (FNEK) believes that this measure is a form of precariousness for young physiotherapists: “A graduate who works in a medical or medico-social structure will necessarily earn less than a person who goes to work as a liberal. Perhaps half as much.”
Difficult, then, to reimburse sometimes exorbitant tuition fees: “Financially, it becomes very complicated since we have private institutes, especially in the Paris region, where tuition fees can go up to 10,000 euros per year. We do four years, that is to say that we will have already spent almost 40,000 euros and we have to reimburse them. It becomes very difficult”regrets Maëlis André.
A measure experienced as an injustice
However, there will be an alternative to wage employment, since young graduates will be able to choose the liberal exercise, but with one constraint: they will have to settle in an area under-endowed with physiotherapists.
However, the obligation of geographical installation is what doctors have escaped so far, analyzes Pascale Matthieu, president of the Order of physiotherapists. “They say that coercion is not a good thing for doctors, but we think it’s a wonderful thing for physiotherapists. And you understand that this difference in treatment is very badly experienced by the profession and is seen as additional bullying“, she denounces.
In return, negotiations will resume, under the aegis of the Ministry of Health, to make physiotherapy studies less expensive in the future.