France has more than 26,000 qualified doctors outside France. Romanian practitioners are the most numerous. A majority of them are general practitioners.
In 10 years, the number of doctors graduating outside France and practicing in our territory has almost doubled. In 2017, 26,805 physicians with foreign qualifications, including 22,619 practicing practitioners, were registered with the Order of Physicians. In 2007, they were 14,000, reports the Demographic Atlas of the National Council of the Order of Physicians (CNOM) presented on October 12.
“These doctors are not invaders. Deciding to practice in another country is a brutal decision that is not easy to take, said Dr François Arnaud, general delegate for internal relations of the CNOM during the presentation of the Atlas. This departure is triggered more by the conditions of practice in the country of origin than those of the host country. “
More than 4,000 Romanian doctors in 2017
In France, more than half of the doctors trained abroad come from Europe. And the image of the Romanian doctor is not a cliché. In 2017, more than 40% of doctors graduating outside France came from this Eastern European country, i.e. 4,254 doctors. This is 7.5 times more than in 2007. “Romania is robbed of all its doctors, which poses an acute political problem in this country”, underlined Dr Arnaud. Next come Belgian (16%), Italian, German and Spanish doctors.
Some 12,500 practitioners travel even more kilometers and do not hesitate to cross the Mediterranean. Algerian doctors represent more than a third of doctors trained outside the EU. Syrian, Moroccan, Tunisian and Malagasy practitioners also come to settle in France.
Source: CNOM
French doctors with diplomas abroad
Among these 26,000 doctors trained abroad, a certain number are of French nationality. These are often students who failed in the first year of medicine in French universities and who decide to try their luck elsewhere. Romania and Belgium are the preferred destinations for these students.
According to the CNOM in 2017, 817 French or naturalized graduates in Romania. In addition, there are 250 French students who have returned to the country to take the internship examination and thus obtain a French diploma.
Hospital workforce
Almost two thirds of these health professionals are salaried. They represent, in fact, an important source of doctors for hospitals. The European graduates alone occupy more than 900 anesthesiologist and resuscitator positions and more than 300 surgeon positions.
Nevertheless, general medicine remains the specialty most practiced by these foreign doctors. Around 1,800 qualified practitioners in Europe, including 979 graduates in Romania, were practicing as general practitioners in 2017.
Do not fill medical deserts
And like their colleagues trained in France, these foreign doctors do not settle in medical deserts. The maps in the CNOM Atlas are striking: these practitioners settle along the Belgian and German borders, as well as in Ile-de-France or on the shores of the Mediterranean. “Foreign doctors are not used to fill our gaps in the supply of medical care in town and in hospitals. On the contrary, they worsen the disparities, but this is not their fault, because they are right to settle where they want ”, commented Dr Arnaud.
Source: The red dots represent areas with a shortage of doctors. Doctors’ facilities, all exercises combined, are represented by the blue dots, CNOM.
For the CNOM, these observations clearly show that the financial incentives allocated to under-dense areas have no more effect on French doctors than on foreigners. We must therefore find a new answer. “We have to look at the problem on a European scale, and what matters is to modify the conditions of exercise”, indicated the general delegate for internal relations of the CNOM. “The time has come to be politically effective”, launched Dr Patrick Bouet, President of the Order during the presentation of the 11e edition of the atlas.
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