Álvaro Fernández (foreground/right) with a colleague from the Vienna Hospital.
Working outside of Spain is an option that doctors are increasingly considering. If you master the language and are not afraid of the cold, the option of working in a austrian hospital can represent an annual income of up to 110,000 euros gross. An option to which is added a strong stabilization policy, which leads to having a fixed position after one or two years working in the hospital.
This is the case of Alvaro Fernandeza specialist in Urology and Andrology who currently assists in the Hospital Clinic Donau Stadt in Vienna. In his case, love and the option of working abroad took him to the Austrian capital, a place that now “I don’t plan on returning to. I’ve thought about it, in fact I’m going to buy a house here and I don’t I propose to return for different reasons, among which is job and sentimental stability”.
How much does a doctor charge in Austria?
In economic matters, wages make a significant difference compared to Spain. Thus, at basic salary of about 80,000 euros per yearextras are added for guards and for dealing with private insurance. In this way, as explained by the doctor from La Rioja, “in Germany and Austria there is what would be called special insurance, which comes to be mutual insurance in Spain. Well, through this system, these private insurances when we attend a public center to an adhered patient, the insurers pay an extra to the hospital and part of that extra money also goes to the doctors”. Some payments that at the end of the month, together with the guards, can suppose a sum close to the monthly salary of a doctor in Spain.
But not everything is economics. Stability is another key factor that leads doctors to decide not to return to Spain. In the words of Álvaro Fernández “compared to Spain, the stability in Austria is greater. For example, the minimum contract is two years and in Spain there are six-month contracts, which from the point of view of stability is regular. Here everything is more controlled, in my first hospital when they renew you the third time they have to make you permanent, that is, as a place in property in Spain after doing some oppositions “.
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The minimum contract is two years.and in Spain there are six-month contracts, which from the point of view of stability is regular” |
The comparison leads the doctors to have no doubts, “I remember the associates of my hospital in Madrid, who signed twice a year or who were 75 percent of their day but came to work every day. Or the case of my father, who is also a doctor, and he took the oppositions when he was older and until then he was interim. That always gives some unease”. Thus, at the age of 32, Álvaro Fernández would opt for a place next year, an unthinkable situation for his classmates who are still in Spain.
And if greater recognition is added to the profession, the doubts dissipate. Well, the recognition is “greater, there is more respect, but it is true that when it comes to complying with the decisions of doctors in Spain they put less trouble.”
Requirements to practice as a doctor in Austria
But not everything is easy when it comes to practicing medicine in Austria. Thus, to practice as a specialist, Fernández had to accredit the C1 level of German and pass a health German exam from the Vienna College of Physicians. This last exam has a cost of about 1,000 euros, and “it is your responsibility, from the hospitals they do not give you any help, it is understood that you must prove the language before starting to work”.
In the language “they are inflexible”. Accustomed to a foreign population, they have no problems with accents “many times they don’t know how to differentiate if you’re from one country or another, that doesn’t matter to them. But yes, German is given as a necessary and essential thing and that it has to be well”, emphasizes the doctor.
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