Opinion/Feedback

Introduction: In modern society many disabled people are confronted with architectural barriers. The law of 11 February 2005 has introduced regulations imposing accessibility to all buildings open to the general public and this measure is in line with sustainable development.

Material and methods

This survey was carried out in 2010, among general practitioners of the Loire département as well as wheelchair users to evaluate the accessibility to doctors’ surgeries.

Results/Discussion

Eleven per cent of doctors’ surgeries had a reasonably good access for wheelchair users. Fortunately, home visits of doctors are still possible allowing the more disabled patients to receive medical care when they cannot choose a doctor with an easily accessible surgery. Doctors were aware of the idea behind the law and what it implied but most of them weren’t really conscious of when it should be applied. 38% of them thought they had up to 1st January 2015 to make their surgeries meet the requirements. A majority of doctors of the département found the information about these norms useful. The younger doctors appeared to be more concerned and did not hesitate to set up their surgeries within recently built and accessible health centers, while 25% of older doctors considered taking early retirement to avoid this constraint! A hard-line enforcement of the law could have had harmful consequences by making worse the expected lack of doctors. We know what happened: The legislator opted in 2015 for possible exemptions to the accessibility rules of 2005.

Conclusion

Having made general practitioners conscious of these compulsory requirements, it seems it would be useful to publish a leaflet as was done in Picardie. It would be interesting to conduct the same survey today, to measure the effectiveness of the implementation of the law in surgeries, which should have improved the participation of the public concerned.