Germany is looking for foreign medical specialists in Latin America with a program that helps them with housing, visas, and guidance. But navigating a rigorous certification process remains a challenge.
00:00Dr. Freddy Bautista Vanegas is making his rounds here in a Parkinson's clinic in Beelitz, Germany, an hour from Berlin.
00:08Before coming to Germany, he practiced medicine in his home country of Bolivia.
00:13But the process to become a certified doctor here has been a long one.
00:19I have to be very honest with you. This process is a bit tedious.
00:22It is a bit long, but with a lot of perseverance, a lot of support, and a lot of patience, we can achieve it.
00:30We can achieve this process.
00:34Bautista Vanegas is one of approximately 300 doctors that have come to Germany through a program aimed at reducing job vacancies in health care.
00:42It also benefits partner countries.
00:44In Mexico, for example, 40,000 medical students graduate each year and compete for just under 18,000 training positions.
00:53Bautista Vanegas is far from home, but feels welcomed by his colleagues and patients alike.
01:00And the patients always ask, where are you from? What are you doing here?
01:05When I tell them I'm from Bolivia, most of them automatically become happy, start smiling, and say, oh, I was in Bolivia.
01:14Bolivia is so nice. I went on a vacation to Bolivia.
01:17Since 2017, Germany's Federal Employment Agency has been running an initiative that places specialized doctors from mostly Mexico and Colombia into German health care facilities.
01:36For us, it is really important to work with countries who have a surplus of professionals in a certain area, so they won't have a shortage in their own countries.
01:52So we have as, like, focus countries, for instance, Mexico and Colombia, because that is the case.
02:04Between 2023 and 2024, nearly 50,000 critical jobs in health care remained unfulfilled in Germany, according to the country's public health agency.
02:15Medical professionals going through the program, like Bautista Vanegas, have to learn upper intermediate B2 level of German in their own countries.
02:24Then there is a visa process, which can take several months.
02:28Once in Germany, doctors practice under the supervision of a senior doctor while studying and taking a series of other qualifying tests.
02:36Next week, I have the phase four exam, which is the exam for technical medical language.
02:43Once we pass this exam, we only have the last one left.
02:52Doctors in the program must obtain the qualification to practice medicine within two years of arriving here.
02:58The specialized program helps them with nearly every step of getting settled, from finding housing to navigating the often complicated bureaucracy.
03:07For example, each of Germany's 16 federal states has different requirements for becoming a certified doctor.
03:14We need good guidance through this federal system, the different recognition processes.
03:21That should be more streamlined in the future, and it will be, I think, but until now, it's one of the most, the biggest challenges also for us.
03:34Meanwhile, Bautista Vanegas prepares for his medical technical German language test next week, the last one of two.
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