Foreign Doctors and the Road to a Swedish Medical License : Experienced barriers of doctors from non-EU countries

Sammanfattning: This thesis in Global Development has looked at the personal experiences of non-European medical doctors that have migrated to Sweden to find out what they have encountered during the process of trying to obtain a Swedish medical license and if there are signs of discrimination. Sweden has a shortage of doctors, but has not resorted to brain drain. Contrary, it is difficult for non-European doctors to work as doctors in Sweden. This thesis has used a qualitative research strategy and five non-European unemployed doctors that were trying to get Swedish medical licenses as well as one non-European doctor that was working, were interviewed. Empirical data from a seminar with Swedish doctors about the pro-cess that foreign doctors have to go through to be able to work in Sweden has also been used in this thesis. The results showed that doctors from non-European countries have stricter requirements to fulfill in order to be able to practice medicine in Sweden than doctors coming from European countries. The system for accepting foreign doctors and validating their competence was flawed. The pro-cess was confusing, frustrating and unnecessarily long. Although there was no direct discrimina-tion or prejudice, European doctors were favored by the system.