Mateusz Gładysz

Lekarz is the Polish basic medical qualification — six years of medical school followed by the Lekarski Egzamin Końcowy (the State Medical Final Examination, a 200-item written paper administered by the Centrum Egzaminów Medycznych in Łódź) and a thirteen-month staż podyplomowy covering internal medicine, paediatrics, surgery, obstetrics and gynaecology, anaesthesia and intensive care, psychiatry, emergency medicine, and family medicine. The medical degree is conferred by the medical university; the corresponding right to practise — Prawo Wykonywania Zawodu — is issued by the regional chamber of physicians (Okręgowa Izba Lekarska) under the supervision of the national chamber (Naczelna Izba Lekarska). It is one of the basic medical qualifications listed in Annex V, point 5.1.1, of EU Directive 2005/36/EC, and is therefore subject to automatic recognition across the EU and EEA.

I qualified as lekarz at the Medical University of Warsaw in 2014 and completed the staż podyplomowy at the Military Institute of Medicine in Warsaw between October 2014 and October 2015. Polish medical registration through the Naczelna Izba Lekarska has been continuous since — Polish licence number (Numer Prawa Wykonywania Zawodu) 2985148, verifiable in the NIL public register at rejestr.nil.org.pl.

The German Facharzt für Plastische und Ästhetische Chirurgie — Specialist in Plastic and Aesthetic Surgery — is the substantive specialty title for plastic surgeons trained in Germany. The curriculum requires six years of structured Weiterbildung under a Weiterbildungsbefugter at an accredited Weiterbildungsstätte: twenty-four months of common surgical trunk and forty-eight months in plastic and aesthetic surgery, with mandatory rotations in intensive care and emergency reception. Operative case categories, methodological competencies, and clinical assessments are documented in a Logbuch signed off by the Weiterbildungsbefugter. Training concludes with the Facharztprüfung — a non-public oral examination before a panel of the regional chamber of physicians.

The title is the regulatory pre-condition for independent specialty practice in Germany — for Niederlassung, consultant-level positions, and acting as a Weiterbildungsbefugter for the next generation in turn. It is one of the medical specialty qualifications listed in Annex V, point 5.1.3, of EU Directive 2005/36/EC, and is therefore subject to automatic recognition across the EU and EEA.

My specialty training began with the Surgical Common Trunk programme at the University Hospital of Zurich under Prof. Pierre-Alain Clavien (November 2015 to late 2017), and continued with the substantive plastic surgery training at Hannover Medical School in the Department of Plastic, Aesthetic, Hand and Reconstructive Surgery under Prof. Peter M. Vogt (from March 2018). The Facharzt title was conferred on 27 June 2022 by the Ärztekammer Niedersachsen — licence number 2022/001150, signed by the then-Präsidentin Dr. med. Martina Wenker.

FEBOPRAS — Fellow of the European Board of Plastic, Reconstructive and Aesthetic Surgery — is a voluntary supranational fellowship issued by EBOPRAS, the examining board of the UEMS Section of Plastic, Reconstructive and Aesthetic Surgery. UEMS, the Union Européenne des Médecins Spécialistes, was founded in 1958 and operates through forty-three Specialist Sections that develop European training requirements for each medical specialty.

The examination has two parts. Part 1 is a 120-question written paper in English, three hours, covering the EBOPRAS syllabus and held twice yearly across multiple European host venues. Part 2 is the oral examination — two sessions of approximately twenty-five minutes each, conducted by panels of examiners drawn from across UEMS member countries and covering eight clinical categories: congenital abnormalities, trauma, burns, hand surgery, tumours, reconstruction, aesthetic surgery, and breast surgery. The oral, in EBOPRAS's own words, is intended to test whether a candidate is fit for safe independent practice in plastic surgery.

FEBOPRAS does not confer a right to practise — that remains with the national authority of each country. It confirms that the holder's specialty knowledge has been independently tested to a pan-European standard, by examiners drawn from outside the holder's own training institution. Eligibility requires either national specialty certification in plastic surgery or, for in-training candidates, at least four completed years of recognised specialty training.

I passed the FEBOPRAS examination in November 2021, during the final year of plastic surgery training at Hannover.

FEBHS — Fellow of the European Board of Hand Surgery, also conferred as the European Diploma in Hand Surgery — sits within a different UEMS structure. Hand surgery is treated by UEMS as a multidisciplinary qualification recruiting from plastic surgery, orthopaedic surgery, and general surgery; governance accordingly sits with the UEMS Multidisciplinary Joint Committee on Hand Surgery, jointly with FESSH (the Federation of European Societies for Surgery of the Hand). The European Board examination predates the formal joint committee — first administered in Paris in 1996 under FESSH, with UEMS endorsement coming at the Council's Prague meeting in October 2010.

The examination has two parts. Part 1 is an online multiple-choice written paper, taken once a year through an independent professional examination provider. Part 2 is the oral, held over two days at the FESSH annual congress in the days before the main scientific programme — three oral examination stations, each staffed by two examiners, with case-based scenarios and clinical and radiological images. Approximately two hundred candidates sit per cycle. Quality is monitored externally and, since 2023, by CESMA, the UEMS Council for European Specialists Medical Assessment.

Eligibility requires national specialty certification in plastic, orthopaedic, or general surgery, plus at least one year of dedicated post-specialisation hand-surgery training in an accredited centre, with operative volumes documented in the EBHS logbook against minimum case-volume requirements. As with FEBOPRAS, the diploma confirms training to a pan-European standard but does not, on its own, confer a right to practise.

I passed the FEBHS examination in June 2025, following the year as Oberarzt within the hand surgery team at Kantonsspital Aarau under Prof. Jan Plock as Chefarzt and PD Dr. Florian Früh as Leitender Arzt and Head of Hand Surgery.

The Swiss medical profession is regulated under the Bundesgesetz über die universitären Medizinalberufe (the Medical Professions Act — Medizinalberufegesetz / MedBG, Loi fédérale sur les professions médicales / LPMéd in French). Federal recognition of foreign medical qualifications sits with the Medizinalberufekommission (MEBEKO), the medical commission of the Federal Office of Public Health (Bundesamt für Gesundheit, BAG). Under the 1999 bilateral agreement on the free movement of persons between the European Union and Switzerland, medical qualifications issued in EU and EEA member states are recognised in Switzerland in a manner analogous to the automatic recognition under Annex V of Directive 2005/36/EC. The professional licence itself — Berufsausübungsbewilligung — is issued at cantonal level rather than federal level: each of Switzerland's twenty-six cantons has its own public health authority overseeing professional practice within its territory.

The Polish lekarz qualification was recognised by MEBEKO on 16 December 2015 — the recognition that enabled work as a doctor during the Surgical Common Trunk programme at the University Hospital of Zurich between 2015 and 2017. The German Facharzt für Plastische und Ästhetische Chirurgie was recognised by MEBEKO on 27 September 2023, in preparation for the return to Switzerland to work at Kantonsspital Aarau. The Aargau cantonal professional licence — Berufsausübungsbewilligung under the Medical Professions Act, for practice under own professional responsibility — was granted on 6 November 2023, with active status.

The Swiss healthcare system identifies registered medical practitioners by a Global Location Number (GLN): 7601003689761. The registration is verifiable in the public register of medical professions maintained by the Federal Office of Public Health at healthreg-public.admin.ch.

Polish specialist recognition for plastic surgeons trained elsewhere in the EU and EEA runs through Article 21 of EU Directive 2005/36/EC. Plastic surgery is one of the medical specialties listed in Annex V, point 5.1.3, of the directive — qualifications listed there are subject to automatic recognition between Member States, without re-examination. The German Facharzt für Plastische und Ästhetische Chirurgie is on that list. A surgeon holding the German qualification is therefore recognised by the Polish chamber as equivalent to specjalista chirurgii plastycznej — Specialist in Plastic Surgery — without the need to sit the Polish Państwowy Egzamin Specjalizacyjny. The recognition decision is taken by the regional chamber of physicians; the entry is then carried in the central register maintained by the Naczelna Izba Lekarska.

My German Facharzt and Approbation were submitted to the Okręgowa Izba Lekarska in Warsaw, which recognised the qualification under the Annex V automatic-recognition route. The Polish specialist title specjalista chirurgii plastycznej is recorded against my name in the central register of the Naczelna Izba Lekarska.

The recognition reflects the structural symmetry of the EU specialty list. My specialty training itself was completed in Switzerland and Germany — no part of it was undertaken in Poland.