| The Alberta International Medical Graduate Association, which represents foreign trained doctors living in Calgary, is calling on the provincial government to do more to help members get licensed to work in the province.
Association director Sandra Albuquerque says there are currently over 200 foreign trained doctors in Calgary who aren’t able to work in their profession and meanwhile there’s a province wide doctor shortage.
"There are so many foreign trained doctors here and there are doctor shortages so why not use these resources?" asks Albuquerque.
It often takes years and thousands of dollars to jump through all the bureaucratic hoops required to work as a doctor in Canada, says Albuquerque. She says many foreign trained doctors give up because they have to find a way to support their families.
Foreign trained doctors have to pass three rigorous medical exams in order to get licensed. The three exams cost thousands of dollars and you can only take them when they’re offered, which could be six months apart, says Albuquerque.
Then many foreign trained doctors have to prove their medical skills through a residency program, just like Canadian medical school grads ,even if they have years of experience working as a doctor in their former country.
However, foreign trained doctors aren’t guaranteed a residency. The province has created the Alberta International Medical Graduate Program, which provides residencies solely for foreign trained doctors, but next year there are only eight spots for family physicians and six specialty residencies. The association is calling on the government to increase the number of residencies to at least 32 to give more doctors who qualify a chance.
"We are not asking (the government) to remove exams. We know we are capable of passing the exams and we do but give us equal opportunity and treat us with respect," says Albuquerque.
Albuquerque says she knows of people who abandon Canada for the US because they know if they pass the requisite tests they will get a residency and then a job.
Yolanda Limcangeo , vice chair of the association, knows firsthand how hard it is to be licensed to practice medicine in Calgary.
Limcangeo, who worked as a family doctor in the Phillipines for 10 years prior to moving to Canada, is currently working as a medical lab assistant, a position she says requires only an eight-month technical course at SAIT.
She briefly worked the night shift at Wallmart but was expected to do heavy manual labor and didn’t have the physical strength for it.
"I was literally crawling home I was so tired and it was for $7 an hour," says Limcangeo. "My husband said are you sure you want to do this? What if you injure your hands."
As a doctor, her hands are priceless.
Limcangeo says she gets depressed every time she hears people talking about a doctor shortage in the country.
"I want to yell, ‘Hey, you’ve got me.’ It’s very frustrating," she says. "I think most of the International Medical Graduates have their lives on hold. You don’t know what’s going to happen. It leads to resentment and depression."
"Medicine is not just a job or career. It’s a life. It’s like dying. We’re confined to menial jobs."
In 2002 University of Calgary economist Herb Emery studied what it’s costing Alberta not to have foreign trained doctors working in their field. At the time there were 160 foreign trained medical grads who weren’t working as doctors in Calgary. He found that over the course of their working lives the province would be losing between 34 to 64 million dollars in revenue if they didn’t work as doctors.
"It’s a high value for not a lot of people," says Emery. "The way we treat foreign credentials is a real waste. If you have someone highly skilled do you want them stocking shelves at Wallmart? It’s like buying a car and then not driving it. It’s just a waste of human manpower."
Emery says governments put barriers in place to prevent doctors with foreign credentials from working in their field because "there’s a strong preference for Canadian citizens and Canadian born to have the highest incomes."
However, Candace Toews, spokesperson for Health and Wellness, says the government is committed to helping foreign medical graduates work in Alberta.
She says by July, 2005 27 international medical graduates will have gone through the international medical graduate program and will be qualified to work as doctors here.
Toews says the government is currently considering expanding the International Medical Graduate Program next year to 28 residencies, which would be close to what the International Medical Graduate Association is asking for.
"We’re doing everything we can under the present model to make residencies available," says Toews. |
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