What you should know

Working for Doctors Without Borders is very enjoyable, but also very demanding. A mission lasts for several months, and during that time you have to give your best, handle life in difficult conditions and deal with situations that you would not normally find yourself in. The reward is directly taking part in saving lives and helping people who often can’t get help anywhere else.

Before you decide to attend an information evening and think about working with Doctors Without Borders, you need to really think about several things. To make sure you don’t forget anything, we’ve prepared the following six steps for you:

1. Check out who we need, and what our basic requirements are.

1. Doctors Without Borders hires professionals from the medical and non-medical fields. Take a look at who we need, and read our basic requirements. We are interested not only in candidates‘ hard skills (for example education, work experience and language skills) but also in their soft skills (for example, flexibility, leadership skills, and stress resistance). You can find the specific requirements for each profession in the profiles of inidividual professions:

• List of medical professions (doctor, nurse, ...)
• List of non-medical professions (logisticians, administrators, ...)
• Who can’t work with us (paramedics, certain specialists, ...)

2.  See what we offer

Do our field employees get a salary? Who organizes the visa, flight ticket, or vaccinations? What is food and accomodation like on mission? Read the following pages:

• What we offer
• Security on mission
• Agreements with hospitals

Do you have more questions? Maybe you’ll find the answer in our Frequently Asked Questions page. If you don’t find the answers there, feel free to write us at hr@lekari-bez-hranic.cz.

3. Ask yourself if mission life is really for you.

Based on our experience with situations that can arise on mission with Doctors Without Borders, we have put together the most important questions to ask yourself. Take a look at them and and decide if life on mission is really what you want. Check out our self-assessment questions here.

4.  Learn about our recruitment process.

What are all the steps involved to get hired to work in the field? Take a look at this infographic of the entire recruitment process.

5. Try to learn as much as possible about working with Doctors Without Borders

Maybe you already follow news about our work on our website or in social media. But you should also take a look at our international activity report, which describes our work in detail. Read the blogs of our field staff (especially those of people who do the same work as you). Watch films about Doctors Without Borders or read some of the books that have been written about us.

It’s an advantage for you to know about our work from several different angles.

6. Register for an information session

Have you gone through read everything? You are now ready to attend an information session. This is the first step on the way to working in the field with Doctors Without Borders. You can find the list of information sessions, which we organize in Prague, Brno, and Bratislava, as well as online, here.