At the Doctor's in German: What to Say, What You Hear

A German doctor's appointment is a short, scripted conversation. Roughly forty phrases cover the phone call, the reception desk, the examination room and the pharmacy - and about ten of them are questions you only have to recognise, not produce. The hard part is not vocabulary size. It is that the two sentence patterns you need most, Mir ist schwindelig and Seit drei Tagen habe ich Fieber, both break the grammar an English speaker reaches for first.

One honest thing before the phrases. If your appointment is on Thursday and you are at A1, do not try to learn German for it. Take a German-speaking friend, or ask the practice when you book whether the doctor speaks English - in Berlin, Hamburg and Munich a large share do, and Doctolib lets you filter by language. Save this page for the appointment after that one. Everything below is worth real study time if you live in Germany; none of it is worth improvising with when a diagnosis is on the line.

How the system works, and why it decides your vocabulary

About 88 percent of people in Germany are gesetzlich versichert (statutory insurance), the rest privat. That single word decides how the phone call goes, because it is the second thing the receptionist asks after your name.

Your default entry point is the Hausarzt - the GP, technically an Allgemeinmediziner or Facharzt fuer Innere Medizin. Specialists (Facharzt: Orthopaede, Dermatologe, HNO for ear-nose-throat, Neurologe) usually want an Ueberweisung, a referral slip from your Hausarzt. Legally, statutory patients may go directly to most specialists since the Praxisgebuehr was abolished in 2012, but many practices will still ask for one, and some will not give you an appointment without it. Gynaecologists, ophthalmologists and paediatricians never need one.

If you cannot get an appointment at all, the number 116 117 also runs the Terminservicestelle, which is obliged to find you a specialist slot - in practice within four weeks for a referral marked urgent.

Making the appointment and getting past the desk

The phone call has a fixed shape. They answer with the practice name, you say what you want, they ask three questions, you accept a time.

• Guten Tag, mein Name ist Ana Silva. Ich haette gern einen Termin. - the Konjunktiv II haette is the polite default; Ich moechte einen Termin vereinbaren is equally fine. See the library if haette gern still feels like a mystery.
• Sind Sie gesetzlich oder privat versichert? - answer: Gesetzlich, bei der TK.
• Worum geht es? or Was fuer Beschwerden haben Sie? - one clause is enough: Ich habe seit einer Woche Rueckenschmerzen.
• Waren Sie schon einmal bei uns? - first visit means a form, the Anamnesebogen.
• Passt Ihnen Dienstag um 8:40 Uhr? - Ja, das passt. or Geht es auch nachmittags?
• If it is acute: Wir haben eine offene Sprechstunde von 8 bis 10 Uhr, kommen Sie einfach vorbei.

At the desk, three sentences carry you: Ich habe einen Termin um zehn bei Dr. Weber., Ich habe eine Ueberweisung dabei., Ich bin neu hier. What you will hear back is almost always Ihre Versichertenkarte, bitte, Hat sich etwas geaendert - Adresse, Krankenkasse? and Nehmen Sie bitte im Wartezimmer Platz. The card is chipped; they insert it, and since 2024 your prescriptions are stored on it electronically as an e-Rezept.

Describing symptoms: three patterns do almost all the work

The dative person

German puts you in the dative for whole-body sensations. The thing you feel is the subject; you are the person it happens to.

• Mir ist schwindelig. - I am dizzy. Not ich bin schwindelig.
• Mir ist uebel. - I feel sick.
• Mir ist kalt / heiss.
• Mir tut der Hals weh. - literally: to me hurts the throat. The body part is the subject, so it is Mir tun die Ohren weh in the plural.

The alternative is the compound noun with -schmerzen, which is easier and just as native: Ich habe Kopfschmerzen / Halsschmerzen / Bauchschmerzen / Rueckenschmerzen / Zahnschmerzen / Ohrenschmerzen. These are worth drilling as a block in vocab, because they are the highest-frequency medical words in the language and they all follow one rule.

seit + dative, present tense

English says "I have had a fever for three days." German says Seit drei Tagen habe ich Fieber - present tense, because the fever is still going. Getting this wrong is the single clearest signal that you learned your German in a classroom outside the country. Seit also takes the dative, hence drei Tagen, einer Woche, einem Monat.

Impersonal es for the type of pain

German doctors ask what kind of pain it is, and the answer is an impersonal es clause.

Add the location with a preposition: Es zieht im Ruecken. Es sticht in der linken Seite. And two more you will want: Ich fuehle mich schlapp (run down) and Ich bin erkaeltet (I have a cold, distinct from Ich habe Grippe, which Germans reserve for real influenza more strictly than English speakers reserve "flu"). These pain verbs live as fixed pairs, which is why they belong in collocations rather than a word list - es zieht on its own tells you nothing.

What the doctor says to you

This is pure listening. You never produce these sentences; you just have to not freeze.

• Was fuehrt Sie zu mir? / Was fehlt Ihnen? - what brings you here. Fehlen means "be missing", which is a strange but standard idiom.
• Seit wann haben Sie die Beschwerden? - Beschwerden is the all-purpose word for symptoms.
• Haben Sie Fieber gemessen?
• Nehmen Sie regelmaessig Medikamente?
• Sind Sie gegen etwas allergisch? / Vertragen Sie Penicillin?
• Machen Sie bitte den Oberkoerper frei. - undress from the waist up.
• Atmen Sie tief ein. Und aus. Nicht atmen.
• Tut das weh, wenn ich hier druecke?
• Machen Sie den Mund auf.
• Ich schreibe Sie bis Freitag krank. - your sick note, the Arbeitsunfaehigkeitsbescheinigung, now transmitted electronically to your insurer; you get a printout for yourself.
• Ich verschreibe Ihnen ein Antibiotikum. / Das muessen wir abklaeren. - abklaeren means further tests.
• Kommen Sie in einer Woche noch mal, wenn es nicht besser wird.

If you lose the thread, one sentence saves the appointment: Entschuldigung, koennen Sie das bitte langsamer sagen? Doctors hear it daily and it costs you nothing. For anything serious, say so plainly: Mein Deutsch ist nicht gut genug dafuer. Koennen wir das auf Englisch besprechen? A doctor who cannot is obliged to make sure you have understood the risks anyway.

The pharmacy

The Apotheke is a separate errand, and German drugstores (dm, Rossmann) do not sell medicine - only the Apotheke does, and a surprising amount is apothekenpflichtig (pharmacy-only) even when it is rezeptfrei (no prescription needed). Rezeptpflichtig means prescription required.

What you say: Ich habe ein Rezept. (hand over the card), Haben Sie etwas gegen Halsschmerzen?, Gibt es das auch als Saft? What you hear: Nehmen Sie das zum ersten Mal?, Dreimal taeglich eine Tablette, nach dem Essen, Auf nuechternen Magen (on an empty stomach), Das macht 5 Euro Zuzahlung. And yes: Zaepfchen are suppositories, and German pharmacists suggest them for adults with a straight face.

Learn it now, not in the waiting room

This is maybe 120 words and 40 phrases. Learned cold the week before an appointment, it evaporates; learned on a spaced schedule over a month, it stays for years, and it is the kind of German that decides whether you understand your own diagnosis. Our medical and everyday-life decks drill these as full sentences with native audio - Mir ist schwindelig, not schwindelig on a flashcard - because the dative and the seit tense are exactly what falls apart under stress. Start with the free tier and see the pricing if you want the whole A1-C2 path behind it.