The situation for several thousand foreign doctors working in French hospitals has become more complicated since the end of the exemption scheme put into place during the Covid-19 pandemic. Nearly 1,900 of these practitioners have now lost their right to practise, a great loss for French hospitals already struggling with shortages of medical staff. FRANCE 24 spoke to some of them.
Karima*'s last visit to the prefecture was a complete nightmare, as her residence permit was not renewed. "All I have is a receipt", she says. This is despite the fact that she has been working as a paediatric orthopaedic surgeon – including in the emergency department, where she is on call at least four nights a month – for the past two years in a hospital in the Parisian suburbs. "My colleagues in general surgery asked me to come help out," says the surgeon, who is originally from a country in North Africa*. "I'm not going to let them down," she says, although she doesn't know how much longer she will be able to practise.
