How To List Internship Rotations On A German CV
Should your German CV show every internship rotation as its own line? Only if the department or hospital changed. Otherwise, merge and show total months.
Ahmed Quteishat
Assistenzarzt, Innere Medizin (Berlin) · Founder of Klaro
Merge rotations that happened in the same department of the same hospital into one line, with the total months. Give a new line only when the department or the hospital changed. That is the whole rule.
Why six lines hurt your CV
A German chief doctor reads your CV in under a minute. If your internship year shows 6 lines for 6 rotations, it reads like a diary, not a work history.
Two lines that both say 'Innere Medizin' with different dates look careless. Merge them into one line, one department, the full time span.
When a new line is right
Give a rotation its own line when it was a different department. Chirurgie and Gynäkologie are two lines, never one, even if they sat back to back in the same hospital.
Give it its own line too if the hospital changed, even inside the same department. Three months of Innere Medizin at Cairo University Hospital count as one line.
Three more months at Al-Azhar Hospital count as a second line. A German reader checks the hospital name, not just the specialty.
Drop the rotation numbers
No German hospital numbers its rotations. 'Rotation 1', 'Rotation 2', 'Rotation 3' mean nothing to a chief in Stuttgart or Leipzig.
Write the department name instead: Innere Medizin, Chirurgie, Pädiatrie. That is the word they search for when they scan your CV (Lebenslauf).
How to write the dates
Use month and year for every line, start to end: 03/2022 to 08/2022. A German CV with unexplained gaps between dates gets a second look, usually not a good one.
What to do now
- Pull your internship record (Logbuch) and list every block with its department, hospital and dates.
- Group any blocks with the same department and same hospital into one line with the total months.
- Keep separate lines for a different department or a different hospital, even if the dates sit back to back.
- Remove every 'Rotation 1/2/3' label and write the department name instead.
Stand: 2026-11-02. This is a guide, not legal advice. Every German state has its own rules, and rules change. Check with your state's medical chamber (Landesärztekammer) before you act.
Ahmed Quteishat — Assistenzarzt, Innere Medizin (Berlin) · Founder of Klaro
Ahmed built Klaro after watching how much of a doctor's move to Germany gets lost in paperwork rather than medicine.
