In France, each school (nursery school, primary school, middle school, high school) must have a school medicine service in its premises provided by specialized health professionals. This team is made up of school doctors (now called “national education doctors”), nurses, school medico-secretaries and social workers who are an integral part of the establishment’s educational team.
Problem: France is currently facing a shortage of school doctors. It is the Academy of Medicine which sounds the alarm bell: in June 2016, there were “only” 1035 school doctors on the national territory, which corresponds to a loss of approximately -20% compared to in 2008. Depending on the region, the supervision rate varies between 2,000 students per school doctor … and 46,000 students for a single national education doctor.
Children from disadvantaged backgrounds are the most penalized
According to the Academy of Medicine, “medical examinations for children in school are no longer provided regularly”: thus, between 2015 and 2016, only 1 in 2 children aged 6 would have benefited from a nursing screening or examination. medical. In addition, “according to the departments, these figures vary from 0 to 90%” add the specialists, who underline the penalization of the pupils resulting from underprivileged backgrounds.
The role of the school doctor is however essential within the establishment: it is in particular he who will identify the pupils suffering from developmental, language or learning disorders, propose integration measures for the pupils suffering from ” a handicap or a chronic disease (asthma, diabetes, allergies …) or even organize prevention actions related to certain themes (puberty, sexuality, abuse, smoking …).
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