Controverse « Les soins palliatifs : en route vers la spécialité ? ». Les soins palliatifs ne doivent pas aller vers la spécialité

A French decree introduced a specific national medical diploma on Pain and Palliative Care, so-called type 1 DESC, thus recognizing palliative care as a new medical specialty in 2007. Does this new diploma will or should be the exclusive curriculum degree allowing to practice palliative care medicine? Such a demand raises many problems: organizational difficulties due to the statutory constraints of this type of diploma in France; impossibility of applying for doctors who wish to change their professional career; impossibility to train simultaneously doctors and nurses, one of the major assets of the various existing university diplomas; incapability to train the adequate number of doctors needed to take care of the so-called “identified palliative care beds” in all hospitals. Thus, the usual specialty curriculum degree should not be the exclusive path for training and graduating to practice palliative care medicine. The creation of a so-called “capacity”, a national diploma delivered under the auspices of the Ministry of Universities in France, open to both doctors and nurses, seems to be the best solution to answer the requests of training competent health care professionals in palliative care medicine.