One-time Burnaby resident Kaja Pluta wants to return to B.C. when she graduates from medical school in 2014, but she fears as a foreign-trained doctor shell be jobless.
Pluta, a Canadian, is in her second year at Poznan University of Medical Sciences in Poland. She will likely have to seek a medical position in another country because there are relatively few positions available for foreign-trained Canadian doctors.
The roadblocks put in our path by Canadian medical schools are almost impossible to break through, Pluta wrote in an email to The Burnaby Now. The worst is getting the impression from Canada that we are neither needed nor good enough to come home. I will, of course, apply to every province, but I really want to return to B.C.
Plutas father, Dr. Henryk Pluta, a gastroenterologist in Abbotsford, says it is frustrating to hear his daughters talk about the challenges they face to get back here. His other daughter, Joanna, graduated last year from the same medical school in Poland where her sister is studying, and she is currently doing her residency in England.
Both of them have some fear they wont be able to get back to B.C. but they would like to, he said. I can advise them, but there are many barriers.
Each year in B.C., medical school graduates compete for a limited number of residency positions. The Ministry of Health reserves approximately 260 of these mandatory apprentice jobs for Canadians who graduate from North American medical schools, and another 26 spots for foreign-trained graduates.
Competition to get into the University of British Columbia medical school is high. Many would-be doctors in B.C. head overseas to get training at fully-accredited medical schools, but then are not eligible for the limited number of local residencies in the province each year.
Both Pluta sisters have written licensing exams to qualify for medical practice in Europe, the U.S. and Canada to increase their chances of getting work.
To deal with the current shortage of medical experts in some regions of the province, the Ministry is actively recruiting foreign-born or foreign-trained doctors who have already completed their training in another country.
The cost to put a new medical graduate through a residency program in B.C. is approximately $100,000 per year, which is covered by the Ministry of Health. A two-year family residency program is $216,000, while a five-year family residency is $550,000.
While the Ministry is expanding the number of residency positions available for foreign-trained doctors from just six in 2003 to 26 in 2011, and a total of 58 expected in 2015 many feel there should be equal opportunity with those who get their training here.
All theyre asking for is to complete on a level playing field for residency positions, said Dr. Drew Thompson, a cardiac surgeon at Vancouver General Hospital and president of The Society For Canadians Studying Medicine Abroad. With hundreds of B.C. physicians set to retire in the next few years, the discriminatory policies that treat B.C. graduates from foreign medical schools as second class citizens must stop now.
There are approximately 3,000 Canadian students studying medicine at about 80 accredited medical schools in 40 different countries worldwide, according to Dr. David Snadden, executive assistant dean of education for the faculty of medicine at UBC. The inevitable differences in training techniques mean integrating medical graduates from schools outside North America into the Canadian health care system may not be as easy as with those trained here, he suggested.
Whats very difficult for us to determine is what are the competencies of all those other people from all those other places, he said. Theyre not a homogenous group, theyre very varied. So what were trying to do is to work out what is the best way we have to assess them to see whether their competencies are those that we can assess in a way that makes us confident theyre going to be able to cope within the system here.
In the Canadian medical training system there is a strong emphasis on service and supervision, noted Snadden, which he says is not emphasized in some overseas schools during medical training.
