Foreign doctors ready to help are ‘sidelined’ by regulation, expert says

Despite thousands of experienced foreign doctors living in Canada ready and willing to help amid the COVID-19 pandemic and beyond, many say they are being sidelined.

Over 21 months into the COVID-19 pandemic, Canada’s public health systems are stretched thin while thousands of foreign-trained doctors living in Canada remain sidelined due to credentialing and licensing policies.

Experts say the barriers in place include not recognizing international experience and asking foreign doctors to start as if they were freshly graduated medical students. It’s limiting them from working in Canada as physicians and contributing to the effort to combat COVID.

“This is the time to make a change,” said Shafi Bhuiyan, an associate professor at the University of Toronto, who was a practicing doctor in Bangladesh, but had to work through the Canadian accreditation process.

Dr. Saida Azam spent nearly four years working as a physician in India and Oman but she has been unable to work during the pandemic. Her years of training, experience dealing with thousands of patients, and desire to help, has not been enough to get her working in the Canadian healthcare system.

“I want to get involved as much as possible. It has been very difficult for me to be on the sidelines, because this is the time for me to give my fullest experience to the population where I am living,” Azam said.

Currently there are more than 13,000 internationally trained doctors in Canada who are not working as doctors, according to the Internationally Trained Physicians’ Access Coalition. Of those doctors, 47 per cent are not in the healthcare field at all.

Meanwhile, Canada ranks 26th worldwide in physician-to-patient ratio, at 2.8 doctors per 1,000 people, according to Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). That’s about half the number in Norway (5.3) and other developed countries. The Canadian Medical Association estimates five million Canadians don’t have a primary care physician.

In Ontario and B.C., foreign doctors looking to practice must get a certificate of registration with a governing medical college, verify their degree to ensure they were educated by an institution in the World Directory of Medical Schools, secure a license from the Medical Council of Canada, and undertake one year of postgraduate training or active medical practice, as well as obtain Canadian citizenship or permanent residency.