The Minister of Health, François Braun unveiled Wednesday afternoon the first conclusions of the National Council for the Refoundation of Health. Its objective: to improve access to care in France by drawing inspiration from local initiatives that work and thus create a “toolbox” at the national level. Among the measures announced, the possibility for nurses to issue death certificates.
The first conclusions of the National Council for the Refoundation of Health were unveiled on Wednesday by the Minister of Health. François Braun announced the deployment of healthcare access services (SAS) in all departments before the end of the year. These telephone services are being tested in several French municipalities and allow patients whose attending physician is not available to be directed by a regulator to a professional suited to their health problems by calling 15 directly.
Objective: to double the number of multi-professional health centers
Faced with medical deserts, the minister also wants to continue to diversify the supply of care in France. He wants the number of multi-professional health centers to double by 2026.
Nurses will be able to produce death certificates
It is also a question of delegating even more powers to nurses, pharmacists and midwives. In particular, pharmacists will be able to renew prescriptions for patients with chronic diseases for a period of three months. As part of an experiment next summer, nurses will also be able to issue death certificates, whereas currently only doctors can do so.
An experiment that is already debating
An idea is welcomed by Thierry Amouroux, spokesperson for the National Union of Nursing Professionals (SNPI): “We are faced with areas of medical desert while there are 140,000 liberal nurses who regularly intervene in the patient’s home. will not add a workload. We accompany our patients until the end, we have always done this and it is not the fact of completing the medico-legal document that will change the approach to nursing care. There is no financial interest for us, we do this to help.
“I don’t think a nurse is trained to do this kind of thing”
But relieving doctors of this act is also an additional responsibility for nurses. Not enough to convince certain health professionals like Doctor Sophie Bauer, president of the Union of liberal doctors. “What training have they received? Because it still involves their responsibility. Doctors all have training in their forensic medicine course, that is to say, we are taught to detect a certain number of small signs which can sometimes be a little rough and which alert on the possibility that the death is not so natural as that. This kind of clinical investigation, it is of a medical nature, I do not think that a nurse be trained to do this sort of thing,” she said.
In total, 30 million euros are devoted to the deployment of these CNR Health solutions on the territory.
Source: Europe1
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