The 121st German Doctors’ Congress (“Deutscher Ärztetag”) in Erfurt dealt intensively with the obtaining of the license to practise medicine for physicians from non-European countries and made demands on the legislator.
These demands include:
- A state-wide standardised, efficient and transparent system of medical examinations should be established for foreign doctors, which ensures good medical care by foreign physicians and offers them increased legal certainty.
- An examination of the submitted foreign certificates for authenticity and equivalence should in future be carried out by a federal authority in order to ensure a standardised assessment. The Advisory Board for Health Professions (“Gutachtenstelle für Gesundheitsberufe”, GfG) should be expanded and mandated to accept and decide on requests for assessments of equivalence (“Gleichwertigkeitsprüfung”) within the context of recognition procedures.
- Each applicant from a non-european country should take a knowledge test (“Kenntnisprüfung”), which can be repeated up to twice. An exchange of data between the registration authorities regarding failed knowledge tests is to be set up in order to prevent so-called approval tourism.
- The knowledge test on the basis of a German medical examination should be based on new scientific findings and test knowledge that is essential for the practice of the medical profession. A multiple-choice system is not the appropriate instrument to check the knowledge for the practice of the medical profession.
- The knowledge test should be carried out according to a national standard and by universities.
- A licence to practise medicine (“Approbation”) should only be granted after a knowledge examination has been passed. This has to be equivalent to the German third state examination of medical studies.
- Medical language examinations (“Fachsprachprüfungen”) should be conducted at a high level that is standardised throughout Germany.
- The federal states of Germany should ensure that foreign physicians who have to pass a knowledge test to prove an equivalent level of knowledge of their qualifications receive an appointment within the legally prescribed period of six months.
