CCA-Inserm-Bettencourt

A bond between fundamental and clinical research

Young doctors and pharmacists with a science thesis finish their internship with two doctorates in hand and are promised great theoretical and clinical contributions. Nevertheless, they will have to wait several years after the end of the internship to be recruited to a hospital-university post and to be able to combine care and scientific research. These few years of beating, during which the constraints of the hospital are too numerous, do not allow them to maintain a link with basic research.

Faced with this reality, the Fondation Bettencourt Schueller and Inserm initiated a program in 2017 called CCA Inserm Bettencourt. These university clinic manager-hospital assistant (CCA) contracts are a logical continuation of the dual medicine-science curricula. It was necessary to allow young doctors and pharmacists with a doctorate in science to begin their hospital-university career as soon as their internship was over.

A unique opportunity

A pioneering effort

This new program confirms that the Foundation's investment in the early training of physicians in research is bearing fruit. Better integrated into the hospital-university fabric, young double graduates acquire the experience and autonomy necessary for their medical practice and to lead a project and a scientific team. CCA Inserm Bettencourt's experience will give them the keys to gaining access, at the end of their clinic, to statutory university hospital positions. These positions will then allow them to continue to exercise their dual vocation.

If the CCA Inserm Bettencourt concerns a limited number of young doctors and pharmacists, this status should be emulated, like the School of Inserm Liliane Bettencourt. This very first school of medicine and science in France was first conceived with the idea of fighting against the progressive demedicalization of Inserm which, since the 1980s, had seen its proportion of doctors drop dizzily. However, the contiguity between clinic and research is essential to therapeutic progress: proximity to patients inspires, promotes and accelerates translational research, that which brings innovations from laboratories to the bedside of patients. The Inserm Bettencourt CCAs will take part in these fruitful exchanges while helping to deploy the network of French biomedical research of excellence.