Germany to ease licensing for 1674 Ukrainian doctors

By Marie Kerres, dpa Sunday, August 04, 2024

 

BERLIN – The German government is weighing regulatory changes to make it easier for Ukrainian medical students to continue their training and become doctors in the country, the Health Ministry said on Sunday in response to inquiries.

The ministry also made clear, however, that each of Germany’s 16 federal states are already free to issue professional licenses to Ukrainian doctors who have completed their medical training.

That was in response to demands from state officials and a new report by the Welt am Sonntag newspaper, which found that more than 1,400 Ukrainian doctors who fled to Germany after the full-scale Russian invasion of their country are still waiting for a license to practise in Germany.

According to reporting by Welt am Sonntag based on data from most German states, at least 1,674 Ukrainian doctors who fled the country have applied for a licence to practise in Germany since February 2022.

Only 187 applications have been approved so far, the newspaper found, while 1,402 are still being processed.

Waiting times for licenses aren’t just long for Ukrainians. The report also found that it typically takes between 15 months and three years for doctors from other countries outside the European Union to be granted a licence to practise medicine.

Susanne Johna, chairwoman of the Marburger Bund medical association, pointed out to the newspaper that doctors from abroad are increasingly opting to work in other EU countries instead of Germany.

“Bureaucratic hurdles and understaffed state authorities are mainly to blame for this misery,” said Johna.

The health minister for the state of Lower Saxony, Andreas Philippi, on the other hand, put the blame on German Health Ministry.

Philippi said he’s appealing to Health Minister Karl Lauterbach to standarize and digitize the application process so it can be sped up significantly. State leaders made a similar recommendation at the beginning of July.

Lauterbach rejected the criticism in a post on X.

“Unfortunately, many states are both training too few Germans and admitting too few foreigners,” he wrote.

However, Lauterbach said the issue would be part of a healthcare reform he’s pushing in the autumn which also include the recognition of foreign nursing staff.