1/ "90% of young doctors are foreigners, and 75% of them don't speak adequate German". A German doctor pseuodnym "Bernd Ahrens" gives a frank, anonymous interview. Like so many other German institutions, the health-care system here is quietly collapsing. welt.de/politik/deutsc…
2/ There aren't enough places in German medical schools, and the best students often leave Germany because conditions here are dire -- earning potential is low, funding is scarce, and the bureaucracy is stifling. So Germany is dependent on foreign doctors.
3/ But of course the most talented foreign doctors are not going to Germany. So Germany imports anyone from countries like Yemen, Jordan, Syria, Bulgaria, and Romania.
4/ Technically they're supposed to speak German at at least C1 and they're supposed to prove their foreign credential is equivalent to a German medical degree, but hospitals desperately need warm bodies so these standards are fudged.
5/ As a result, the senior doctor says, 90% of new hires are foreign, and 75% don't speak sufficient German to do their jobs properly.
6/ Ahrens notes one case in which a cancer survivor complained of lower back pain -- a clear sigh of metastases -- but the foreign doctor never grasped that the patient was telling him that he had previously had cancer surgery.
7/ The doctor sent him home, the problem got worse, and the patient was nearly paralyzed by a tumor.
Mistakes and misunderstandings like this are constant, and the supervising physicians who are German have to step in and fix mistakes and mediate conflicts.
Mistakes and misunderstandings like this are constant, and the supervising physicians who are German have to step in and fix mistakes and mediate conflicts.
8/ This is a huge extra burden, so nobody wants the top jobs anymore; the Chief Medical Officer position at the Ahrens' hospital has been vacant for a year. Ahrens has been offered top spots at other German hospitals but has refused.
9/ When he points to the problems caused by unqualified foreign doctors with poor German, he is often accused of being right wing or a xenophobe. Yet everyone who's been treated at a German hospital -- including me -- has encountered the problem first-hand.
10/ The background problem, of course, is that Germany is becoming steadily poorer. You could attract more Germans and good foreigners to the profession with higher salaries, but there's simply not enough money, and that's not going to change anytime soon. Asked for comment,
11/ German politicians and licensing agencies dribble pablum about how all doctors must have "suitable qualifications" and that foreign doctors are "filling a crucial need". In other words, the sort of thing they say about all problems until something goes horribly wrong.
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