To counteract the shortage of doctors, the executive is relying more than ever on foreigners. The draft law currently in preparation “On immigration control and improving integration” provides for the creation of a multi-year residence permit for “Valent medical and pharmaceutical professionals”, intended to facilitate the exercise of the profession of doctor, midwife, dentist or foreign pharmacist in France.

“They have doctors […] who come from countries that don’t necessarily have an agreement on the recognition of qualifications and who are there to tell you: ‘But we would like to work in the hospital.’ To apply for a special permit from the prefects”, or even to apply for medical orders, government spokesman Olivier Véran (himself a hospital doctor from home) explained to France Inter this Wednesday.

A form of automation

“We will have a kind of automatism and faster recognition that will allow us to benefit immediately from the skills of these foreign nurses and give these foreign nurses the opportunity to meet their needs without delay,” continued the former Minister of Health , referring in particular to the case of the Lebanese doctors and dentists.

“Instead of taking three or four months to get the same result, it’s going to take three or four days, three or four weeks,” he said. Earlier in the year, the Ministry of Health reported that “nearly 5,000” qualified doctors from outside the European Union (Padhue) are working in public hospitals.

This initiative comes at a time when hospitals are struggling to recruit new staff and many nurses are leaving the staff amid difficult working conditions. In France, too, there is a shortage of doctors in the city. About 6 million French do not have an attending doctor. A situation that only adds to the difficulties of the hospital.

“It’s good, the back and forth with the administration can be avoided,” said Slim Bramli, president of the FPS, the Federation of Naturopaths, a union representing foreign doctors, on the creation of a multi-year residence permit.

More specifically, the draft law submitted to the State Council provides that a residence permit can be granted to a foreigner who works for a year or more in a hospital or public or private non-profit medico-social institution. valid for one year. This would be extendable by 13 months.

Foreign practitioners who pass the “anonymous knowledge verification tests” can be issued with a card for a maximum of four years. Interested parties can let their families benefit from the residence permit they have received.

Announcement of orders would no longer be necessary

The draft law, which will be discussed in the spring, also provides for a change in the individual authorization procedure for practicing a profession in France for doctors, dentists or midwives from abroad.

This authorization can be granted today after the opinion of a commission made up in particular of “delegates from the national councils of orders and the national organizations of the professions concerned”. The draft law envisages a simpler “staffing, in particular from specialists”.

Authorization would no longer be granted by the “minister responsible for health or on behalf of the Director General of the National Management Center”, but by a competent “authority”.