According to projections by DREES, the research department of the Ministry of Health, the number of doctors will decrease until 2024. This low will not be caught before 2035 because of the numerous needs of an aging population
The number of doctors will decrease until 2024 and will not return to its current level until 2030, but taking into account the growing needs of an aging population, this “hollow” will not be caught up until 2035, according to a study by the Drees released on Friday.
The projections of the statistical service of social ministries are timely, while the “national conference” responsible for setting the number of health students for the next five years meets for the first time this Friday.
The issue is crucial for doctors and pharmacists, whose short-term decline is inevitable: for the former, the workforce “decreases until 2024” then “returns to the current level by 2030”; for the latter, the low point will be reached in 2027 and the delay made up in 2033.
Increase in the number of students
Except that in the meantime the French population will continue to grow and age, increasing its “care needs”. By integrating these data, “a more significant dip” is emerging, which would not be absorbed until 2035 for doctors, and even in 2049 for pharmacists.
But a 20% increase in the number of medical students from 2021 would make it possible to “fill this hollow with an advance of about three years”. In pharmacy, this would save more than ten years, with an “initial level exceeded from the second half of the 2030s”.
It remains to be seen what the effect of this call for air would be on the flow of foreign graduates, which has steadily increased over the past decade, supported in particular by the many young French people who have gone to study in Europe in order to bypass the “Numerus clausus” then in force in France, before returning to settle there.
This is particularly true for dentists, whose numbers are expected to swell 48% by 2050, but only 5% without foreign graduates – with a low until around 2040. The same goes for midwives, whose number would only increase by 19% over the period, instead of 27% with foreign graduates.
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