The European Federation of Salaried Doctors (FEMS) was created in 1964 under the name of "European Federation of the Doctors of Communities", and adopted its current denomination in 1981. It is governed by statutes deposited in France according to the regulation of the international associations. Its goal is to defend at the European level the moral and material interests of the doctors working under administrative subordination, to ensure these doctors and their patients the best level possible of diagnostic and therapeutic independence with respect to the administrations, whose exclusively economic point of view can sometimes be in conflict with the principles of a correct medicine.
The Federation played a significant role to obtain that the Directives of 1975 on free movement of the doctors, who at the beginning were to understand only the liberal doctors, are established by taking account of all the forms of medical exercise, including salaried medicine.
The FEMS always thought that salaried medicine was neither in opposition nor in alternative to liberal medicine, but was complementary.
For this reason work and statement were carried out, inter alia on:
· a definition of salaried medicine
· conditions of exercise and the European Charter of the Salaried
Doctors, endorsed later by the Standing Committee of the European Doctors
· practical and deontological methods of the possible strikes
· the medical plethora (the FEMS was among the first, sometimes criticized,
to denounce the phenomenon of the medical unemployment, with the dangers
which results from this for quality of medicine)
· need for a numerus clausus for the entry in the Faculty of Medicine
· hospital structures, on-call duties and obligations
· unsuitable use of young doctors in the hospitals of certain countries
· the danger of the too narrow bulk-heading enters the specialities
· the place of the doctors in management
· various methods to ensure the quality of the medical acts
· medical advertising in various European countries
· hospital departments in various European countries, etc.
This work was published progressively and sent to the Member Associations and many institutions or personalities dealing with health problems at the national or European level. It is available on this website.
The FEMS works in close cooperation with the UEMS (European Union of the Specialists Doctors) , the AEMH (European Association of the Doctors of the Hospitals), the PWG (Permanent Work Group of Junior Doctors) and takes part as Observer in the CPME (Standing Committee of the European Doctors), the European Academy for the Continuous Medical Training and in the Forum of National Medical Associations and the WHO, which allows him a more general vision of the problems of the medical profession.
The Federation opened recently to the Central and Eastern European countries, with some of which it is nice to collaborate on the basis of the same medical tradition, the political vicissitudes had made forget.
The official languages of the FEMS are French and English.