In France, Dying at Home Can Mean a Long Wait for a Doctor

“There are doctors, if they don’t know the patient well, say to themselves that they don’t want trouble later on,’’ said Dr. Olivier Bouchy, the vice president of the French Medical Council in the department of Meuse. “Signing a death certificate is not harmless.’’

Like with many things in France, tradition is perhaps also an obstacle to changing the doctor’s role in certifying deaths. The death certificate process, Dr. Bouchy said, harked back to an earlier time.

“Who declared a death in the royal court? It was the doctor of the king,’’ Dr. Bouchy said. “We remain rooted in very ancient traditions.’’

In France, the state’s role in regulating people’s daily lives — including in matters of health — remains strong. So the lack of a doctor, especially at the emotionally vulnerable moment when a family member dies, can feel like a deep betrayal.

“We felt abandoned by the state,’’ said Frédéric Deleplanque, who had to wait more than two days for a doctor to certify the death of his father-in-law, Jean-Luc Bajeux, a retired autoworker. “We were nothing.’’

On a Saturday morning earlier this year, Mr. Deleplanque discovered his father-in-law, who had been ill, in his apartment in Douai, slumped in his wheelchair on his way to the toilet. He turned off the heat and the television before reaching an emergency operator on the phone.

“He told me to touch my father-in-law to make sure he was dead,’’ Mr. Deleplanque recalled. “I told him he was deceased, but he insisted. So, there you go, I touched him, he’s cold.’’