Posted Dec 21 2022 at 11:11Updated Dec 21. 2022 at 18:45
The executive is counting more than ever on foreigners to respond to the problems of shortages of doctors. The bill “to control immigration and improve integration”, currently being prepared, provides for the creation of a multi-year residence permit “talent-medical professions and pharmacy” supposed to facilitate the practice of doctors, midwives, dental surgeons or foreign pharmacists in France.
“You have doctors […] who come from countries for which there is not necessarily an agreement on the recognition of diplomas and who are there to tell you: ‘But we would like to go and work in the hospital.’ Each time, we are obliged to carry out procedures and to request an exemption from the prefect “, or even to request medical orders, justified the government spokesperson, Olivier Véran (himself a hospital doctor from origin), on France Inter this Wednesday.
A form of automaticity
“We are going to have a form of automaticity, of faster recognition which will allow us to benefit from the skills of these foreign caregivers without delay and for these foreign caregivers, to be able to meet their needs without delay”, continued the former Minister of Health, referring in particular to the case of Lebanese doctors and dentists.
“Instead of it taking three or four months to achieve the same result, it will take three or four days, three or four weeks,” he said. At the start of the year, the Ministry of Health reported “nearly 5,000” qualified practitioners from outside the European Union (Padhue) working in public hospitals.
This initiative comes at a time when hospitals are struggling to recruit and are seeing many caregivers leave, against a backdrop of difficult working conditions. France also lacks doctors in town. Some 6 million French people have no attending physician. A situation that only reinforces the difficulties of the hospital.
“It’s good, it can avoid the back and forth with the administration”, reacts, about the creation of a multi-year residence permit, Slim Bramli, president of the FPS, Federation of health practitioners, a union representing foreign practitioners.
In detail, the bill transmitted to the Council of State provides that a foreigner, who has come to work for a year or more in a hospital or public or private non-profit medico-social establishment, could be issued a residence permit. valid for one year. This would be renewable for 13 months.
Foreign practitioners who have passed the “anonymous knowledge verification tests” will be able to obtain a card for a maximum of four years. Interested parties may allow their family to benefit from the residence permit obtained.
Notice of orders would no longer be required
The bill, which is scheduled for discussion in the spring, also plans to modify the individual authorization procedure to practice in France for doctors, dental surgeons or midwives from abroad.
This authorization can today be granted after the opinion of a commission composed in particular of “delegates of the national councils of the orders and the national organizations of the professions concerned”. The bill proposes that it be more simply “composed in particular of professionals”.
The authorization would no longer be issued by the “Minister responsible for Health, or, on delegation, by the Director General of the National Management Center”, but by a competent “authority”.