Since February 2022, a total of 2,094 medical professionals from Ukraine have begun working in the Czech Republic, according to the Ministry of Health, as reported by Radio Prague. Among them are 472 doctors, 36 dentists, and 630 nurses.
However, some of these individuals had already arrived in the country before the war, as noted by Health Ministry spokesperson Ondřej Jakob.
“The entire process of recognizing qualifications, even if a candidate successfully passes all three parts of the exam on their first attempt, takes between one and one and a half years. This means that the first healthcare workers who applied for qualification recognition could not receive it until at least autumn 2023,” Jakob explained.
The Ministry does not track whether exam candidates have a work permit due to their long-term stay in the Czech Republic or whether they entered under the temporary protection program as refugees who arrived after February 2022.
Over the past three years, the Ministry of Health has granted six-month practice permits to about 700 Ukrainian doctors, most of whom work in the network of hospitals serving the Ústí nad Labem Region. Their number has increased by 250 in the past year.
Since February 2022, 1,586 medical specialists without a medical diploma have started working in the Czech Republic. Of these, 668 have passed the qualification exam and received new authorizations: 115 in 2022, 180 in 2023, and 370 in the previous year.