Gleichwertigkeitsprüfung für ausländische Ärzte/Ärztinnen in Baden-Württemberg

Abstract

Recent years have seen an increasing number of foreign doctors starting to practice medicine in German hospitals (or more rarely, in surgeries). In order to be granted the German license to practice medicine, doctors with a medical degree from outside the European Union have to undergo an equivalency examination. The supervisory authority for this is the examination office of the relevant federal state, which is why different procedures are being applied in the individual states. The aim of this paper is to point out the problems that frequently arise when conducting this specialist exam and to make suggestions as to how to improve the quality of the procedure. 6 senior professors from the examination boards of the 4 medical schools in Baden-Wuerttemberg formed a focus group and discussed the difficulties associated with the exam, recorded problems in its actual implementation and then analysed the minutes of the meeting in a results-based manner in order to compile proposals for optimisation. In view of the deficits in subject knowledge, general communication skills and specific communication skills, the difficulties of the current recognition procedure and the existing equivalency exam fall into 3 categories: structure and content of the exam, examiners and exam candidates. In consultation with the State Examination Office Stuttgart, some processes for optimisation have been devised, e. g., to develop a special curriculum which could be used for guidance and to recruit more examiners. The recommendations of the focus group from Baden-Wuerttemberg are an important step towards more transparency and possibly towards a Germany-wide standardisation of this exam.