Should GPs provide on-call care?

Everywhere in France, Thursday, May 26, emergencies are closed or congested. For some, the on-call duty of general practitioners would make it possible to ensure permanent care, in the evening, on weekends and on public holidays. Some patients indeed come to the emergency room, while a visit to the doctor is sometimes sufficient. “He could have done it in town, these are always less patients for us, so the possibility of taking even better the other patients who require care in the emergency room“, explains Kheir-Eddine Hamdi, head of the critical care unit at the southern Seine-et-Marne hospital.

For doctors, performing call duty is complicated. “Doing night shifts, when you have days that last 12 hours, and the next day will also last 12 hours, and working 12 hours at night means 36 hours in a row”, details Richard Handschuh, general practitioner, MG France. In Fréjus (Var), volunteer general practitioners are on call to treat minor injuries.