For assistant doctors
Where to work as an assistant doctor, how to apply and what the pay is — a practical guide for medical students.
Since the summer of 2011, the law has allowed a medical student who has completed at least the fourth year to take part in providing healthcare services as an assistant doctor, carrying out a doctor’s duties within the limits of their competence and skills, under the guidance and supervision of a responsible doctor, without holding a healthcare worker’s registration.
Where can you work?
- County hospital
- Central hospital
- Regional hospital
- Private hospital
- Family practice
- Rehabilitation centre
- Ambulance service (you cannot work as an assistant doctor or team leader everywhere in Estonia)
- Other healthcare-related institutions that hire assistant doctors — in practice the main thing is to be capable and to ask
Information on where people have worked in previous years can be found in the assistant doctors’ feedback documents. It is worth asking your own year and older years for tips and experiences.
Which department should you go to?
An assistant doctor often does well in a family practice, where you meet patients with very varied profiles, the pace is calmer and contact with your supervisor is more personal. In hospitals assistant doctors are often used in the emergency department. That does not mean a student could not work in some other department.
For narrowly specialised departments, make sure you have completed the relevant rotation (family practice and emergency department work do not count here). If a student who has finished the fourth year ends up in a department whose theoretical rotation they have not taken, it can be disappointing both for the assistant doctor, who does not feel their value at work, and for the supervisor, who finds it hard to assign tasks — so the assistant doctor’s usefulness may stay small.
How to apply
For now you still send your CV and a letter of interest to a potential employer (e.g. the hospital’s general contact). It is worth stating in the e-mail which year you are in and listing the specialties whose rotation you have completed. That makes it easier to find you work and ensures you do not end up in a department where your current knowledge falls short.
You have to find the position yourself; the list of vacancies is only partly visible on job portals. This is because hospitals’ need for extra hands changes every year and financial resources are limited, and because job platforms aimed at assistant doctors are quite a new phenomenon still being adopted. Assistant doctoring is not state-funded, so healthcare institutions must find the resources to hire assistant doctors themselves.
If you are interested in a particular department, you can approach it directly (e.g. the head of department or the secretary). Sometimes a place is found precisely because the student shows clear interest and initiative — without that interest the post might never have been offered at all.
Several platforms brokering job ads for healthcare workers, such as VAAB.ee and Vahetused.ee, are now being developed. We are working to popularise them so that assistant doctors spend less energy writing to individual institutions and departments, and institutions spend less time answering the flood of letters. So register on the platforms and keep an eye on new offers.
What does an assistant doctor earn?
On 28 April 2021 the first nationwide collective agreement for the healthcare sector was signed, and it included students working as assistant doctors. The new collective agreement covers 2023–2024 and guarantees assistant doctors an hourly rate of at least 60% of a doctor’s hourly rate. Pay is often raised once someone has worked for a while and proved their value to the department (mostly students who work as assistant doctors year-round rather than only in summer).
Please remember that the assistant doctor system was created to give students a chance to encounter the work of a doctor before entering residency. Previously medical students could only work in healthcare institutions as orderlies or auxiliary nurses. This is a learning opportunity and is not primarily meant as a way to earn money. Please use this valuable opportunity in good faith.
A problem as an assistant doctor?
If you have trouble at work — no supervisor, conditions from the collective agreement being broken, your pay not arriving — you can now write about any of it and ask to stay anonymous: abiarstitugi@eays.ee.
Only one member of the assistant doctor team can access these messages, everything is confidential, and matters are taken further if the writer wishes. You can of course always write directly to abiarst@eays.ee.