Specialist Recognition in Germany
Specialist recognition — Facharztanerkennung — is a separate process from the licence, and it is what an internationally trained specialist actually needs.
How It Works
There is no national body and no national examination for specialist recognition in Germany.
The process runs through the Weiterbildungsabteilung of your state medical chamber (Landesärztekammer), which compares the content and duration of your completed specialist training against that chamber's own Weiterbildungsordnung — its specialty training regulations.
Two consequences follow, and both matter when choosing where to apply.
Because each of the 16 chambers has its own Weiterbildungsordnung, the same foreign training can be assessed differently in different states.
And recognition starts as a comparison of training content and duration, not an exam. Where substantial differences remain and professional experience does not make them up, the missing competence must be proven in an oral examination before the chamber’s committee (MWBO §§18–19). There is no written paper and no published blueprint for it.
Approbation and Facharztanerkennung are separate processes. Holding one does not confer the other.