Workers of the FD Roosevelt Faculty Hospital in Banská Bystrica, one of the largest health care facilities in Slovakia (source: F. D. Roosevelt Hospital)
Several doctors and nurses from outside the European Union have been working in Slovak hospitals. Their employers are satisfied with their work and would welcome more help in employing foreigners from the state.
The Health Ministry is now aiming to implement the idea of a temporary professional internship into the law on healthcare providers. At this point, it is assessing comments and suggestions from other ministries, TASR wrote.
“Trenčín Hospital would welcome the possibility of using a temporary professional internship for doctors,” said the hospital's spokesperson, Martina Holecová, as quoted by TASR.
This hospital registers a number of requests for such an internship from Ukrainian doctors and nurses, she added.
Opportunity for foreigners
To compare, eight doctors from abroad work full-time at F. D. Roosevelt Hospital in Banská Bystrica, central Slovakia. Seven of them come from Ukraine and one from Syria, although he has lived in Slovakia for several years now.
Other non-EU medical staff work in Košice and Trnava. The management in both hospitals has only good experience with them, the hospitals' spokespersons said to TASR.
From internship to work
The temporary internships may help people from third countries to learn about Slovak hospitals while working for them temporarily, Health Minister Andrea Kalavská said.
In the end, if they like the work in any of the Slovak hospitals, they can get their education recognised in Slovakia by passing exams, including the Slovak language certificate.
“Five foreigners work at our hospital, but they are not really foreingers anymore,” the spokesperson for Luis Pasteur University Hospital in Košice, Ivana Stašková, told TASR.
One was born in Canada but has lived all his life in Slovakia, and two Ukrainian women went to a Slovak school, she added.
