Romania opens medical borders: Australia, Canada, Israel, New Zealand and the US on the welcome list

Medical doctors who hold an official professional qualification issued in Australia, Canada, Israel, New Zealand and the US are now free to practice in Romania according to an emergency bill for recognition and equivalence of qualifications approved by the Romanian Government. “Until now, medical doctors were supposed to take a residency test together with Romanian students despite having practiced medicine for ten or twenty years in their respective countries,” said the Romanian Minister of Health Raed Arafat. “Things will be much simpler now for graduates originating from these five countries," noted Arafat. This decision results in a formal recognition and equivalence of the qualifications obtained by the residents of the five countries in question with a specialist doctor's certificate issued by the Romanian Ministry of Health. The process is subject to several conditions, the most important being that the applicant’s training and practice should meet quality standards similar to those governing Romanian medical practitioners. Moreover, foreign nationals’ medical diplomas must have been issued by a designated authority within the respective territory. "There’s a double benefit for us here: one – this makes it easier for Romanian doctors who live in these countries to come back and enter medical practice directly based on the specialization they have developed and holding extensive experience in their domains,” said Arafat. “Second, when we’re dealing with collaboration programs involving colleagues from other countries, cooperation in Romania will be made much easier," added the Minister of Health. The emergency bill is likely to open the way to highly skilled medical doctors who are willing to return to Romania and who might step in to serve in medical specialties that now suffer heavy personnel shortages. According to Ministry of Health records, approximately 15 specialists submitted requests to the Romanian authorities in order to practice here in the past three years. Such applicants expressed their intent to cover key medical domains, such as anesthetics, intensive care, cardiology, endocrinology, internal medicine, anatomic pathology, medical oncology, psychiatry, pediatrics, ophthalmology and cardiovascular surgery. Romania currently suffers from a shortage of medical personnel, mainly doctors, but nurses as well, as many Romanian graduates choose to work abroad, because of the poor pay in the local health system. Ioana Jelea, ioana.jelea@romania-insider.com (photo source: sxc.hu)