French Letter: Not everything is rosy in the garden of French healthcare

It turns out that the NHS isn’t the only healthcare system in Europe to face recurring strokes of the axe. 

Trish, an old friend of mine, who has a combination of Multiple Sclerosis and osteoporosis, fell over a  month ago, breaking her right hip and femur. She was taken to hospital in Morlaix, about 30 miles away, where it was decided that surgery was not appropriate as the bones in her legs were too brittle to bond effectively with a metal replacement. Instead, she was placed in traction, with weights suspended from the end of her bed to hold her leg in place – a tiresome, sometimes painful, procedure that she was told could take up to six weeks, to be followed by a course of physiotherapy, first in the hospital, later at home. 

The hospital in Morlaix is a much-respected institution, high up on a hill to the north of the town centre. On the day my wife and I first visited our pal, she was checked on by nurses and support staff every five minutes, not only to see how she was, but seeking her preference for dinner and afternoon snacks. 

Back home in the meantime, Don, her husband was hard at work converting a groundfloor gite that sits next to the pub they have run together for the last twenty years into an easy access “studio,” complete with drive-in shower and – in due course – an electrically-operated hospital bed. Only when this was completed to the satisfaction of doctors and social workers would Trish be released back into the community. 

Two days after our visit, it was decided that she was taking up valuable space needed for emergency admissions and those with acute conditions. She was removed from Morlaix and transferred to a post-operative and recovery centre in Plougonven, seven miles or so the east of Morlaix and, as it happens, closer to the pub. We visited her there for the first time last week as she settled in to her new surroundings. She was exhausted, but, as always, resolutely cheerful. Once again, the door kept opening and shutting as doctors and nurses came and went. Trish – now a naturalised citizen, with language skills to match, known to expats in the pub as “the Frenchwoman” – was amusing herself by teaching English phrases to the staff. 

“See you later!” one nurse quipped as she departed. 

“Not if I see you first,” Trish replied. 

On our way home, we called in at the pub (now sadly closed for the duration). Don is a very practical chap and a trained engineer. Even so, the conversion on which he is engaged would not have been possible without the help of Bill, a master plumber from Broadstairs in Kent who says that as a young man he used to have to cross the road to avoid conversation with the budding artist Tracey Emin. Bill recently renovated our kitchen and is a true professional. Together, he and Don are working not only on the drive-in bathroom, but on ramps and insulation, as well as a corner kitchenette. 

The issue of the hospital bed has yet to be resolved. New, these fiendishly intricate devices can cost upwards of two-thousand euros, but it looks as if they might be able to get one, on prescription, for three months at a time, the aim being to get Trish to the stage where she doesn’t actually need one. 

So, given the nature of the situation, all was going like the clappers. The bad news came this week when word came through, via a series of chinese whispers, that the centre at Plougonven, built in the 1980s, was about to be shut down permanently, a victim of the fact that not enough specialist doctors, nurses and physios were willing to work in central Brittany rather than, say, Paris, Lyon or Nice. 

The only fully qualified doctor seen each day by Trish is young and inexperienced. A senior colleague, who had kept working beyond the normal retirement age, had finally decided to call it a day, and no replacement could be found. Central Brittany has become a medical desert, critically short of doctors, nurses and –  as I have discovered to my cost – dentists. It’s not that the state doesn’t provide the training or, indeed, the jobs. It is simply that young medical professionals don’t want to work in small towns and villages remote from the joys of metropolitan France. There used to be five dentists in Callac, our local market town. Now there are none. Five years ago, there were five full-time doctors in the cabinet médical. Today, following one departure and an early retirement, there are three, one of whom is a young Austrian woman who moved here because of her love of horses. 

Anyway, the point is that the patients have all been left in a terrible state o’ chassis. The word is that a final decision on whether or not to keep Plougonven open will be taken on April 20. One of the specialist staff tending to Trish has already been informed that she is no longer required, and it will likely be the case that one floor at least of the centre will be put in mothballs, with the loss of 40 beds. 

I frequently tell my British friends that French medical care is much superior to that generally available in the UK, and I’m sticking to that. But not all is sweetness and light. Economies of scale and life-style preferences affect every part of the country. Young people want to work where there is a buzz in the air. They are not much interested in the near-death experience that, at its worst, is life in the sticks. 

Our attention is now focused on April 17, when Trish will be told whether or not she is in a fit condition to be moved home. If she is, fine. Don and Bill will have the gite prepared, and the pub regulars, French as well as English, can look forward once more to a decent beer and a summer of good conversation. If not, we have no idea what will happen.  

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