France Moves Towards Professional Equality for Doctors Trained Outside the EU

Faced with the shortage of doctors in Gers, an orthopaedic surgeon based in the nearby Tarn-et-Garonne wants to increase the number of outsourced consultations. An answer to a national health issue increasingly...

France moves towards professional equality for doctors trained outside the EU

The French government has unveiled a long-awaited reform that will make it easier for healthcare professionals trained outside the European Union to regularise their professional status, as the country grapples with a severe shortage of doctors.

It is a measure designed to combat medical deserts in France. The Ministry of Health has issued two decrees on Thursday 29 May, which modify the procedure for the regularization of doctors with foreign diplomas outside the European Union (Padhue). It must thus enable us to "recognise their journey" of studies of hundreds of doctors who have already been working in French hospitals for years and are an essential mechanism in many hospitals suffer…

The doctors already installed in France have repeatedly denounced the "inequities" of the procedure which must enable them to fit into the new framework applicable to doctors with a foreign diploma outside the European Union.

Practitioners with diplomas outside the European Union (Padhue) have been mobilising for months to denounce the ‘inequity' of a system deemed too selective, depriving them of regularisation even though they operate many health institutions. The Ministry of Health issued two decrees on Thursday 29 May amending the procedure.

The decrees issued by the Ministry of Health, in particular, open a new way of access to "recognizance of the path" of doctors already practising in the territory.