Foreign doctors are not a solution to the soaring healthcare shortage seen in Germany, and in many cases, these foreign doctors actually represent a threat to patients, according to a senior doctor in Lower Saxony who conducted an in-depth interview with Cicero magazine about her experience
There are increasing calls to bring in more foreign doctors to Germany, but the doctor interviewed, who works as a specialist in internal medicine and cardiology in a hospital in Lower Saxony, warns there are serious differences in medical training between countries. She only spoke to Cicero under the condition her name would not be disclosed out of fear of reprisals.
“As a senior physician, I also look after foreign assistant doctors who have a professional license. Out of ten foreign doctors, there is only one that I would let loose on patients. It’s not just about language barriers, but about glaring differences in medical training. Look: A lung cancer patient and a patient with a heart attack receive the same guideline-compliant treatment regardless of their health insurance status. My experience: The majority of foreign colleagues are not even aware of these standards,” she said.
She has plenty of examples in her own experience of how foreign doctors are unfamiliar with standard practices in Germany.
🇸🇾🇩🇪 German politicians are spreading misleading information about Syrian doctors working in Germany.
5,000 Syrian doctors may sound like a lot, but there are 420,000 doctors in Germany. The number of Syrian doctors is approximately just enough to cover the 1 million Syrian… pic.twitter.com/fHJh9945y9
— Remix News & Views (@RMXnews) December 30, 2024“Last week I worked in the internal medicine intensive care unit with a colleague who is an electrophysiologist from Belarus. He was visibly struggling to interpret an ECG. When he then performed a cardiac ultrasound, I had the impression that it was like a moon landing for him. In our everyday medical practice, however, this is absolutely standard practice,” she said.
In some cases, she added, it is very possible her foreign colleagues may have even contributed to the death of patients.
“I also have to report more extreme examples: In connection with an Arab colleague, the public prosecutor’s office has already ordered an autopsy. The colleague put a gastric tube in the lung and a central venous catheter in the artery in the neck. The patient died. I certainly don’t know for sure what caused the patient’s death, but you understand, some of these doctors pose a significant safety risk. This is not only a risk for the patients, but also pushes us senior doctors beyond the limits of our workload,” she said.
She went on to say that poorly trained colleagues are so inept that she has to “protect the patient from the doctor.” This means when she goes off duty and comes back on duty, she has to review all the steps poorly trained foreign medical colleagues did with the patients in order to ensure the patients’ health.
In this regard, she provided another example, stating: “With a young patient in his mid-20s, things were on edge. He was in a life-threatening condition. At the beginning of January, a young Arab doctor was on duty and was responsible for him, but he was not able to insert intravenous needles. It was the Arab doctor, I told you about. So I asked the nurses to look after the young patient themselves, not the doctor. As a senior physician, I expressly forbade this colleague from touching this patient. I could not have imagined something like this a few years ago.”
She said that not all foreign doctors have been an issue in Germany, saying that she has had good experiences with doctors from southern European countries. She noted that the Italian doctors who come to Germany have a “brilliant” level of training and can earn more money in northern European countries. She noted that even though doctors from Morocco may have a poor bedside manner, they have solid medical training; however, doctors from Syria and Afghanistan are another story.
“I have to say: The more Muslim the colleagues have been through their socialization, the more difficult it is to deal with them in everyday hospital life,” she said. “Many Muslim colleagues have great difficulty accepting criticism. Since they have a very strong sense of honor, they immediately feel attacked. When I wanted to explain objectively to a doctor colleague how to issue a death certificate, he shouted at me and accused me of racism. He also said that he did not want to deal with such simple tasks. How can I work profitably with a colleague if he cannot handle criticism and feels his honor is insulted? Constantly learning new things is essential in our profession.”
She also noted that many Muslim doctors harbor “gender stereotypes.”
“It is horrible how disrespectfully they sometimes treat nurses,” she said. “Even I, an experienced senior physician, am sometimes treated with an arrogance and superiority that I have never experienced before in my experience in hospitals. We have young female assistant doctors on the team who tell me quite openly to my face that they do not want to work with Arab colleagues on the weekend. They feel harassed and are afraid. As a woman, I have to say: I can understand my young colleagues very well.”
She also noted that she is not the only one who has had unbelievable experiences with foreign doctors. She notes that her husband once worked in Hesse and had to conduct a state examination with a foreign doctor only to have to fail him due to his lack of knowledge.
“One of these patients had a red face, a classic symptom of shingles. This is a very easy-to-recognize disease. One of the foreign doctors diagnosed that it was a tumor growing out of the head and urgently needed to be surgically removed. The man already had a professional license and was working as a neurosurgeon in Hesse. My husband had no choice but to let him fail. Many of his family members and friends were waiting outside the door. When they got wind of the fact that he had failed the exam, my husband had to be escorted out of the building by security,” she said.
Not only are medical standards much lower in many foreign countries, but foreign doctors are also struggling in Germany with the language, with nearly half of doctors failing the language proficiency tests, as Remix News has previously reported. Based on her own experience as a doctor for nearly 20 years, she says that accelerating the admission of foreign doctors into Germany, including relaxing standards, would be a fatal mistake.
“There is always discussion about whether we should gradually repeal the current rules in Germany and recognize more foreign specialist training. The faster recognition of specialists is just one example of many discussions that aim to admit foreign doctors to our hospitals more quickly and without complex checks. I can only strongly warn against this because, in my experience, a Syrian or Afghan doctor is very far from German standards. In view of the increasingly ideological debates about the shortage of skilled workers in recent years, I am very afraid of this possible development,” said the doctor.
She told Cicero that she is concerned about the poorly researched reporting in the media about the topic of foreign doctors, to which Cicero asks her whether this has to do with a deliberate omission of factors or simply shoddy reporting.
“I think it is both. In many media reports about the shortage of skilled workers and foreign doctors, poor research meets a preconceived, ideologically influenced opinion,” she said. “I have been a doctor since 2006, and I feel more and more strongly how a mainstream view has prevailed in the media debate about the shortage of skilled workers, which says that the recognition of professions should be made easier.”
She also said that the media presents a contorted version of the facts, often portraying a huge wealth of foreign doctors that Germany could be tapping into, including many who are already working in low-skilled professions in Germany.
“The media keeps presenting this manipulative and distorted image of foreign cardiology professors who have to work as garbage men. You know, in reality, that simply does not exist. Don’t get me wrong, we really do need to do something about the shortage of skilled workers, but the solution cannot be to let poorly trained doctors loose on patients. That would be a capitulation to our medical standards, which have distinguished the health system in Germany for a long time,” she said.
