Whether in Beijing, Ankara, Groningen or Würzburg, doctors treat patients with heart failure in remarkably similar ways. Not only are the medical procedures similar, but so are the questions doctors ask, their gestures and the way consultations unfold. This is the finding of an international study led by sociologists Anja Weiß and Tao Liu from the University of Duisburg-Essen (UDE). The findings, recently published in Global Networks, are also relevant to the debate on the recognition of foreign qualifications.