We are a Swedish family considering moving to Switzerland in a couple of years from now. We have searched the internet for some time now, unable to find answer on how easy/hard it is to find positions in our professions.
We are primarily looking at Zürich, although Bern, Basel and other German speaking cities are of interest.
The prerequisites are as follows:
I'm a doctor and specialized in Ob/Gyn. By then I will have been a specialist for about three years, having a total of eight years Ob/Gyn experience. I've studied and trained in Sweden. My main focus is towards gynecology in general and more specifically gyne oncology and tumor surgery. I have a PhD-degree in medicine.
My wife is a nurse and sub specialized as a midwife, also trained in Sweden. She will have about 13 years experience as a midwife, both from delivery wards and maternal health.
We will both have German language certificates level B2.
I'm primarily interested in working at a hospital, while my wife finds both hospital work and outpatient work equally interesting.
So, given the above: Will we be able to find jobs? We know that we will be qualified to get licenses to practice, but we can't seem to find any information on whether it is easy or hard to get employment for people that don't have German as their native language.
You could contact the Swiss Red Cross as you need to get your qualifications recognized and in addition to that you need a certain level of local language skills. Also:
Just my guts feeling, but yes, you should be able to secure jobs quite easily with your kind of profession and background and being EU citizens, unless some MASSIVE changes (read: Silly SVP initiative) would be happening.
I looked at this once. At that time you needed C1 medical German, and B2 "ordinary" German to practice as a doctor. If that's still the case, you need to get C1 medical German.
My daughter's FIL is a retired head doctor at the main Lugano hospital, but also spent some years at CHUV, and is originally from Zurich, so he speaks the three main Swiss languages, plus English!
I never know which language to speak to him in (usually Italian, however)/
He has kindly taken the time to carefully collect - and structure - a wealth of information about the Swiss formal requirements for EU and non-EU doctors, how to go about registering, how to find work, what can increase one's chances, etc.
You will surely find some information there that is not applicable to you, at all, but a lot that is. Drremobond007 is something like the King of this information for doctors!
As a specialist coming from an UE country, u cannot practice independently without having worked 3 years in a swiss establissement qualified to train doctors. U could only practice if someone hires u as a dependent employee and in that case u practice under his responsibility. I dont know how it works for nurses.
I’m under the impression that this applies to non-EU citizens, being one of the pathways to be eligible to practice (based on this excellent thread by drremobond007: https://www.englishforum.ch/educatio...itzerland.html ). We have similar routines in Sweden.
I think a three year long probation period would violate EU/EFTA regulations regarding free movement. In Sweden there is an initial six months long period where both the employer and employee can terminate the contract with short notice, i.e. with one month heads up. This applies to all employments, regardless of origin within the EU/EFTA.