Faced with the shortage of general practitioners in certain regions of the country, patients experience great difficulty in finding a new general practitioner. This is the case of Coralie, Marc and Daniel, who are seriously worried regarding the situation for their own health and the medical follow-up of their loved ones. How can this glaring lack of generalists in Wallonia and Brussels be explained?
General practitioners are gradually becoming rarer and this is nothing new. As we told you last January, a town like Berloz, in the Liège countryside, found itself without a doctor, whereas it had four a few years ago.
Finding a new primary care physician can be a particularly daunting task. General practitioners are indeed often overwhelmed and no longer accept new patients in several regions of the country. For patients, going to another municipality for a medical consultation is not easy either.
In Soigniesin the province of Hainaut, Coralie contacted our editorial staff via the orange Alert us button to testify regarding this issue.
Following the move of her attending physician, she says she cannot find a general practitioner near her home.
“I feel denied, they might still listen to me or advise me on what to do”says the 21-year-old student.
“I have had health problems for several years so I need a doctor for regular follow-up, so that I don’t have to explain everything every time. Sometimes they can’t get my medical file back. I I have stomach problems for a long time, displaced vertebrae in my back,… I have migraine attacks and kidney problems…”
Coralie says she contacted several doctors in her region. She has often received the same answer, which worries her.
“I called in all the neighboring towns and they are not taking new patients. I call back and they always tell me the same thing. Apparently they have quotas of files and they no longer know how to take new patients. Even answer to a question, they don’t know.”
After several unsuccessful calls, she found a temporary solution because it was uncomfortable.
“Recently, I finally found a doctor far from home. I don’t know how to get around when I want. My parents have a car but they also work. I get around by bus, which doesn’t stop in front of the doctor so it’s complicated. The doctor is in Louvignies, 10 minutes from Soignies by car. I go to the doctor at least once a week to do the necessary examinations. It’s surprising not to find a doctor easily close to home.”
Our family doctors, present for 40 years, decided to end their careers at the same time
In Brussels, near Neder-Over-HeembeekMarc (68) and Daniel (74) also wanted to highlight this issue.
The two brothers are worried for their 94-year-old mother and in the longer term for themselves.
“Our family doctors, who have been there for 40 years, have decided to end their careers. They are both in the same practice. They will stop at the same time”, says Daniel. “We are without a doctor despite the phone calls made to several doctors who live in the region. Nobody accepts us. When I say ‘we’, I think of the population, not especially us personally. Little by little, we are going to lose our doctors. In addition to the shortage, there is no doctor who can come to patients’ homes.”
“For the elderly, how do I get medicine? How do I get a prescription?”, asks Marc, a former policeman. “For the moment, when we tell the doctors of the town that we are a new client, they no longer accept us because they are overwhelmed. They no longer come to the house.”
And to add: “Our 94-year-old mother is lucky that our whole family is mobilizing to help her go to a doctor. But what do people do on their own?”, adds Daniel.
We must qualify when we talk regarding shortages
Following these various testimonies, can we really speak of a shortage of general practitioners in Wallonia and Brussels? Is it likely to get worse? For Paul De Munck, president of the Belgian Group of General Practitioners (GBO), it is “obvious” that the two regions are facing a lack of general practitioners.
“There is a lack of general practitioners and there will be a lack of them even more in the years to come because by the time that the measures that we are taking to fill this gap are put in place, we are still heading towards a shortage more serious than the one we know. already today. We must qualify when we talk regarding shortages. Perhaps in absolute number of doctors, we might say that there are enough doctors, if we calculate the number of doctors per number of inhabitants. That’s not the question, it’s more like ‘Where are they distributed?’. There are areas, villages, districts, towns and cities which are already in short supply today. The proof is that many general practitioners say they can no longer take on new patients. The problem is already real.”
Where does the problem comes from ?
Paul De Munck puts his finger on training as well as on the evolution of the profession in recent years. According to him, too few general practitioners graduate each year.
“We have come to this because we have not sufficiently taken into account the real needs. We have not trained enough general practitioners. It is absolutely necessary to raise the bar. There is a planning commission which has set up very recently at the level of the Wallonia-Brussels federation. We have come to the conclusion that it is necessary to train 50% of general practitioners at the level of medical studies. Unfortunately, the commission has agreed to train 43%. We say it will be too little.”
Previously, young doctors settled in places where there was not yet a colleague on site.
“Today, it’s the opposite. Young doctors settle where there is no shortage of doctors because otherwise they risk being overwhelmed. They no longer want to sacrifice their lives for medicine general by working hours that are not possible and they are right. They are also looking for places where the burden of medical care is not too heavy. That is what has changed.”
Which areas are problematic?
Of the 262 municipalities in the Walloon region, more than 2/3 are in relative or absolute shortage (see map below). “Sometimes it is not the municipality as a whole that is concerned, but by district”specifies the Belgian group of general practitioners (GBO). “Some doctors who are old and retiring are not replaced. However, a doctor who leaves means more than 1,000 patients who find themselves without a doctor. Where will they go if he is not replaced?”
How to attract doctors in less provided areas?
Paul De Munck asks for their “rolling out the red carpet”. “Some municipalities say they have a medical house where they can accommodate several doctors. This may be a factor that attracts young doctors.”
What do doctors think of this situation? We have Emily general practitioner in Schaerbeek for 10 years. In the Jean Jaurès medical house where she practices her profession, she tells how the situation has evolved.
“When I joined the team of two doctors who were here, we had time for many things, to talk regarding patients quietly, to personally receive calls,…”she recalls.
“But quickly, we were overwhelmed and we hired a secretary. In a few years, we went from a team of 3 doctors to 7 doctors and 3 receptionists. We have a lot of requests and the population needs a first efficient and available line. What we have noticed is that over the years, we have had more requests. The last two years, with the covid, this has increased. We have fewer general practitioners who have gone out compared to the number of GPs who came out of studies before.”
Emilie notices that fewer and fewer young doctors are settling in the vicinity of her practice. For those who decide to take the plunge, the agenda is filling up at breakneck speed.
“We see that in the neighborhood, there are fewer young people who settle, and when they settle, they are quickly filled in terms of their availability. There is probably a lack of doctors compared to the flow of new patients who arrive in Brussels, where there is a high turnover of the population.”
And to add: “We are also another generation of general practitioners. We are no longer really in the generation where we worked 14 hours a day, where there was a helping spouse at home. We take into account a family life to be respected. For the moment, we are just in time all the time. We start our day at 8:30 am and end it at 7:30 pm with few breaks. It’s one of the aspects of the profession that becomes very difficult, to be able to combine private life with our job.”
The doctor also regrets that he can no longer practice his profession as he sees fit.
“Our way of working is to take time for people and that time, we don’t have it as comfortable as before because we have a lot of requests for appointments. It’s very frustrating not being able to support patients any longer. It’s hard to say no because that’s the very essence of our job. We have few generalist colleagues available to help us. It’s complicated to combine everything. I don’t m “I didn’t expect to be under so much pressure before starting this job. We are looking for reinforcements to help us. The profession is perhaps not as attractive in the current conditions. General practitioners want to maintain a quality of life.”
