Germany now officially seeks nurses from Kosovo, Albania

Federal Health Minister in Germany Jens Spahn from the CDU wants to recruit specialists specifically from Southeast Europe to fight the lack of human resources in nursing.

In a proposal for “Bild am Sonntag”, he has said that the greatest potential of young professionals in this area is in Kosovo and Albania.

There, nursing education is often better than we think of”, he said. However, according to him, the visa problem exists, Koha.net reports.

This worries me. These trained professionals must often wait up to 10 months for a visa to Germany. We need to accelerate this process”, German Minister Spahn stressed.

He stressed Germany needs about 50,000 additional healthcare workers. “We need to search even abroad”, he said, while adding that it is difficult to run a hospital or nursing home in Germany without foreign nurses.

Federal Labour Minister Hwbertus Hale of the SPD plans to present a six-month-long permit so that foreign nurses can get a job.

The “foreigners who want to work as health administrators should be allowed to come to Germany for half a year. Condition: You won't get a penny out of the social security system, and if you don't get permanent work as caretaker in six months, you have to leave”, Hale told the same German newspaper, Koha.net reports.

Hale also said he wanted to raise the nurses' salaries next year.