There are three ways to come, and they are not variants of one another: they differ in length, in what you are allowed to do, in who pays — and in whether you need to speak French. Read the one that matches what you want.
Observership
You come to watch. No procedures, no hospital status, and no French required. You follow the operating lists, the clinics and the multidisciplinary meetings alongside the consultant whose subspecialty brought you here. It is the right format if you want to see how a particular operation is done, or how a pathway is organised, without committing a semester to it.
- EBU Host Centre
The department is accredited by the European Board of Urology as a Host Centre in four fields: prostate cancer, bladder cancer, kidney cancer and stone disease. Those are the areas in which you can be received.
Clinical fellowship
You take part in the daily clinical work of the department, alongside the consultants. Two routes exist, and what separates them is not only money — it is French.
- With funding of your own
Open to doctors who arrive with their own funding — a national urological society, a government scholarship, an EAU grant, or their own institution. You join the daily clinical activity in contact with the consultant staff.
- Funded by Bordeaux University Hospital
The hospital can fund a clinical fellowship under FFI status — faisant fonction d’interne, the French status of a doctor practising as a resident. This route requires enough French to take part in the daily work of the department, to speak with patients and with the staff, and to take part in the on-call rota. It is a patient-safety condition rather than an administrative one, and it is not negotiable.
Research fellowship
Time spent with the clinical research unit or with one of the partner laboratories — I.CaRe and BRIC (Inserm U1312) for kidney cancer, ImmunoConcEpT (CNRS UMR 5164, Inserm ERL 1303) for bladder cancer, and the imaging and artificial intelligence groups for stone disease. Funding may be your own or provided by the department, depending on your CV and on the project you propose.
A research fellow takes a full part in the work: the cohorts, the databases and the analyses — and, where the work warrants it, the publications that follow.
How to apply
In that order, and not the other way round.
- Write first — with your project, not your paperwork
Address your request to the head of department, or to the professor who leads the field you are interested in. Say what you want to do, in which field, for how long, and roughly when.
An email on its own is not enough. Attach three documents:
- Your CV.
- A letter of recommendation — from the head of the department where you currently work, or from your training director.
- A letter setting out what you want to come here for, and what you expect to take home.
Certificates, insurance and proof of funding are not needed at this stage. We reply within about fifteen days.
- The file is put together afterwards
Only once a consultant has agreed to your project does the administrative file begin. Sending a complete dossier before that agreement gains you nothing, because nobody can process it yet.
Who to write to
- Kidney cancerPr Jean-Christophe Bernhard
- Prostate, bladder and testicular cancerPr Franck Bladou · Pr Grégoire Robert
- Benign prostatic obstruction and urethral stricturePr Grégoire Robert · Dr Astrid Boulenger de Hauteclocque
- Neuro-urology and functional disordersDr Grégoire Capon
- Stone diseaseDr Vincent Estrade
Then, in every case: the administrative route
Whichever of the three formats applies to you, the administrative arrangements have to be approved by the management of Bordeaux University Hospital. An agreement between a doctor and a department is not enough on its own — the hospital validates the status, the paperwork and the insurance.
For a clinical fellowship, allow two to six months for these steps, depending on the country where you qualified: it is quicker for degrees obtained in Europe. This, and not the consultant’s agreement, is what sets your actual starting date — so write to us well before the date you have in mind.