Nurses will be able to sign death certificates to avoid ‘often long waits’

They will no longer have to seek medical help. The decree allowing nurses to write death certificates appeared this Thursday in the Official Journal, extending to the entire territory an experiment that has already been carried out in six regions of France since December 2023.

“Nurses will now be able to sign, in addition to doctors, the death certificates of the approximately 150,000 people who die at home each year,” Frédéric Valletu, the health minister, told Network X. This extended experiment will last one year, the ministry also clarified.

The measure applies to volunteer, paid or self-employed state-certified nurses and applies to deaths that occur at home or in nursing homes. Before this, nurses could only write a death certificate if a doctor was unavailable for a “reasonable period of time.” From now on, it will no longer be necessary to check this inaccessibility in advance, as was the case during the experiment.

Volunteer nurses who complete the training will be able to issue these certificates “at any time,” the text also clarifies. “To learn this new skill, nurses must have at least three years of experience and undergo specialized training. To date, 1,217 nurses have already been trained to take this development into account,” the Ministry of Health points out in a press release.

“Better support every family”

The decree “complements the statements aimed at strengthening the role of nurses presented last week and will better support every family in these painful moments,” said Frédéric Valletou, quoted in the document. The ministry emphasizes, in particular, that “some families often face long waits to obtain a medical death certificate that allows funeral proceedings to begin” after the death of a loved one.

“This measure will also free up medical time and thus improve access to medical care in the territories,” the press release also states. If this extended experiment does bear fruit, it will lead to “possible generalization,” the ministry adds.

Six regions of France have been experimenting with this option since December. Parliament and the government decided to open it to the entire territory during a debate on a law to improve access to health care. The measure is part of a set of efforts aimed at compensating for the shortage of doctors in the territory. The Act to Improve Access to Health Care was based on a text proposed by Frederic Valletou, then a Horizons MP.