L’ordonnance à l’ère de l’autonomie : peut-on encore ordonner en 2012 ?

The prescription has a central place in the health care system between improving the health of populations and preserving the social protection system. For the doctor, it concludes a consultation with the patient, after informed negotiation, and takes the form of a written contract, framed by multiple legal constraints. For the patient, noncompliance may hamper the quality of care, and self-medication can generate adverse effects, when promoted by State as a solution to disengagement in the management of some benign disorders, and favored by pharmacists and manufacturers. In addition, disease mongering promotes a new quackery, all the more devious as the game played by the industry works in line with outlying societal concerns, it sometimes looks illegible for the practitioner. In 2012, in the era of the patient’s right to autonomy, can the doctor still “prescribe”?