German military suffering from shortage of doctors

In the last 12 months, some 40 Bundeswehr doctors have quit their service.

“I’ve been annoyed for some time that the leadership at bases glosses this over,” defence expert for the Social Democrats Rainer Arnold told the paper. “We don’t find out there’s a problem until we inform ourselves on location.”

Some doctors even agreed to refund the Bundeswehr more than €100,000 in training expenses to leave the military, the paper reported.

“Some doctors have not excepted transfers for deployment abroad,” Arnold said, adding that some probably signed on to the Bundeswehr because they saw it as their only chance to become doctors and may not have considered the possibility of foreign deployment.

Military Commissioner Reinhold Robbe said he had also found “considerable vacancies in the clinical areas and overworked personnel who have remained in country.”