The president of the Federation of General Practitioners of Quebec (FMOQ), Dr.r Marc-André Amyot, launched an “appeal for collaboration” to Prime Minister François Legault who indicated on Monday that negotiations with his union would be long and arduous.
The Prime Minister said he did not expect negotiations with family doctors to be concluded before Christmas during Mario Dumont’s first morning show on Monday, broadcast on Qub radio and retransmitted on 99.5 FM.
“It’s very, very, very difficult because we have to change the way we do things,” François Legault said Monday. He added that “we absolutely need” “certain” family doctors to take care of “more patients.”
In an interview at The Pressthe Dr Amyot welcomed François Legault’s “change of tone” “compared to the end of the parliamentary session” where the Prime Minister had said he wanted to “fight to the end” during negotiations with the doctors’ union.
The president of the FMOQ, however, refuses to “buy into François Legault’s discourse” concerning “certain” family doctors who “do not work enough.”
“I want to know who these doctors are,” said Dr.r Amyot.
Doctors who take maternity leave during the year? he asks. Doctors aged 65 and over who slow down? Young people who start their practice in July? Those who are on sick leave? “Once you take all that away, who are these doctors?” [qui ne suivent pas assez de patients] ? ” he says.
The Dr Amyot said he was “disappointed” that the prime minister “diverted the discussion from the real problems to improve accessibility.”
According to him, making “certain” doctors work more is not “the solution”. “If that’s the solution, it’s a poor solution,” says Dr.r Amyot: I try to work with the ministry, the doctors, not to do more, not to ask for more, to try to work differently.
The Dr Amyot, who “extends his hand” to the Prime Minister, offers the government “everything [son] commitment to finding solutions.” He advocates for a model of interprofessional collaboration where family doctors, nurses, social workers and various other professionals work together.