Disappointment, annoyance and sadness are feelings that happen to many extra-community doctors who reside in Spain and who cannot practice their profession despite having applied for it compatibility Without reacting, and with indignation at the claim of a shortage of doctors in the country: “We are doctors and they don’t let us work,
discomfort before the slow syncopation of their titles increase Also, noting that many other doctors are seeing this procedure resolved, despite having requested it a few months ago Nuevo decree of approval and verification of degrees in medical, nursing and other health training. “There are people who have been waiting two years for the old decree and now, after the new one has been approved, some people have already received their approval after three months.”
Mariana He’s from Argentina, but he’s been living in Barcelona for a year. He is a pediatrician and specialist in neonatology, and he has 15 Years Experience behind his back. It started with formalism to harmonize its title with December 2021 And the next year he decided to settle in Spain. “Since the law stated that the approval procedures were resolved in six months, I settled in May. When I arrived, I came in contact with other foreign doctors who were in the same situation as me and there we were very surprised delay with approvals.
Mariana states that at that point she began sending emails to various institutions to check the status of the issue. “The answers were terrible. they just told us we’d have to wait He was too late.”
restlessness of all these professionals increase With the arrival of the new decree in November for the homologation of the Medicine title, which was sought to ease these processes. And it’s not that the inclusion of this new measure didn’t work, that it did; It is that it worked, but it left behind thousands of professionals who had been waiting for years for their approval and expedited the resolution of those processes that began on that date.
“We see how the decrees of the new and the decrees of the old are coming out, that we have been like this for years, we are still waiting Mariana explains. “These things cause a lot of trouble, the logical thing would be to outrun those of us who have been there for so long.”
slowness in procedures has forced him to look another job and worked as a telephone operator for five months and also considered travel for others With the idea of practicing as a doctor without delay in countries such as France or Germany.
“I haven’t exercised for a year and seven months,” he explains. “To a doctor medicine is his life, this is my businessI miss my colleagues, being active makes me feel useful, can save lives And I think my hands are tied.”
“Thirty Years of Experience Stored in a Jar”
RUBEN He is a specialist in General Surgery and Occupational Medicine, a career he has been practicing since 1989 and which has been forced to pause for the same reason as Mariana. Like him, he is Argentine and came to Spain October 2021 After starting the approval process in April of the same year.
“I was a distinguished surgeon Career of over 30 years A lot of work, but one day you have to exchange that quantity for quality, especially for life”, says Reuben.
He currently works in a clinic Consultant While waiting for the homologation of your degree to be able to practice. For them, the surprise was also when the final decree was approved and it allowed those who submitted their papers in November to rush through the process. “Then we found out that the people who had been waiting for two years didn’t have no solution No answer whatsoever.”
“We feel like the last people in,” he says. “Spain doesn’t need us to train, we’re just waiting to start working,” Ruben claims. “When you hear and read about Spain’s dire problems, that people wait long hours for medical shifts, and that there are guards without coverage, you don’t understand that there is thousands of doctors What are they waiting to prepare for an officer to see his file”.
“You feel like they’re taking you in joke And no, it’s not that there’s a shortage of doctors, it’s that yes are doctors and they do not authorize us to work”, declares Reuben.
“How come there is a shortage of doctors and I cannot work?”
and laura She is in the same position as Mariana and Ruben. your process is running more than two years and in March he traveled to Madrid with the hope of being able fix it personally, “I went, I had a meeting, they told me they would respond to me in 15 business days and I still haven’t received anything.”
with the career of six years As a gynecologist and obstetrician in Argentina, Ana Laura decides to emigrate to Spain in search of a better quality of life amid protests from bureaucratic plots that do not move forward. “It’s a process Very slow If there is a claim, they will ask me for things that have already expired and then they will deny it because I haven’t practiced for years, whereas the reality is that I don’t because they don’t let me,
“There’s a lot of work and need doctors And here there are many of us who cannot work”, he explains, something that causes him “a lot of pain”: “I am available and without homologation they do not accept an interview, instead In this it doesn’t allow me to have rental contracts and thus a range of things.
For her, the most “unfair” thing is that “past requests” are being resolved and, like her colleagues, she does not understand that those who have been “waiting for years” No response from organizations,
they are Advice for other non-EU doctors The plan to stay in Spain is that they start the procedures as soon as possible, that they do it “as soon as they have the title, even though they don’t know they’re coming”, because the process is “so slow”. That, if they make that decision in the future, hopefully your file will be resolved by now.
Mariana, Ruben and Ana Laura are three names of one long list of doctors who live in Spain and who have been waiting for the resolution of their titles for years in a system Forgotten And that, apart from appreciating what they can contribute to healthcare, they have done little more than let bureaucratic hurdles get in their way.
Although it may contain statements, data or notes from health institutions or professionals, the information contained in Redaccion Médica is edited and prepared by journalists. We advise the reader to seek the advice of a health professional with any health questions.
