Canada has a severe scarcity of doctors — a recruitment crisis that is anticipated to get much worse in the years to come as the number of residency spots on offer fails to retain with rapid population growth.
In spite of those encounters, roughly 1,000 Canadian doctors who attended school overseas are turned away every year since they cannot get residency placing in Canada, according to a CBC News evaluation of medical school statistics. Physicians are mandatory to go through a residency in directive to be licensed to practice.
Canadian doctors who like to come home to work are regularly told it’s not likely because resources are inadequate and there are only few residency spots to go around.
But the medical schools that conduct residency programs still find spots for foreign nationals from countries like Kuwait, Oman and Saudi Arabia — people who often have no intent of remaining in Canada to work over the long term.
All of this is done with Ottawa’s dedication. The federal government has relieved medical schools from immigration regulations that necessitate Canadians get priority for a job.
Critics continue that dismantling the overseas “visa trainee” program — which gives several hundred residency positions to non-Canadians — would free up places so more homegrown doctors can work here in Canada and assist to chip away at the physical debt.
In the present academic year, 1,810 Canadian international medical graduates (IMGs) applied for a residency, conferring to statistics from the Canadian Resident Matching Service (CaRMS). They comprise doctors who went to medical school in countries like Ireland, Australia, and the United Kingdom.
Because Canadian medical schools recognize their own graduates and firmly impose a quota on IMGs, only 370 of them were essentially placed with residencies to complete the mandatory post-graduate exercise.
The outcome is an enormous brain drain, as many trained Canadian physicians are required to go to the U.S. — a country where residency placements are more willingly available.
Dr. Joshua Ramjist is initially from Pickering, Ont. He attended medical school at St. George’s University in Grenada, a small island nation in the Caribbean. Anxiety set in when he attempted to return home to practice.
There were certainly a few restless nights and a little bit of doubt, Ramjist informed CBC News. There is an incredible pool of international medical graduates who are gifted, who are devoted, who want to take care of their fellow Canadians.
Ramjist secured a desired residency and currently works as a pediatric surgeon at the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto, but the staining experience has made him a supporter for other would-be residents who are trying to steer the labyrinthian system.
He said, it reduces the pipeline. We just won’t see people becoming doctors, and that’s risky — we need doctors. We need to decrease barricades to tap into that universally trained talent.
Federal statistics propose Canada will be short of some 44,000 doctors, as well as more than 30,000 family doctors and all-purpose practitioners, by 2028.
Despite the fact Canada is cutting loose some native-born and accepted doctors who attended medical school overseas, hundreds of foreign trainees are regularly acknowledged to residencies here, although an apparent shortage of resources. Saudi Arabians make up the major single national group amongst foreign residents and the quantity of these foreign trainees is growing.
