Medical doctor pathway
- Thread starter Gloria Ugadu
- Start date
Where did your spouse do their medical training, how long have they been practicing medicine and where and what type of physician are they?
I would recommend that you read through the information in the below link. There is also a video that takes you through the process to become licensed to work as a doctor in Canada.
https://www.mcc.ca/about/route-to-licensure/
I don't believe there are any specific immigration pathways for internationally trained doctors. Your husband would simply apply through one of the economic immigration streams.
Not usually hard to qualify via EE as a foreign trained physician if under 40 but the bigger issue is how difficult will it be to get licensed in Canada and practice medicine in a Canada. There is a big difference depending on where you studied and did your residency/other training, what type of physician you are, whether you speak French, etc.
He's under the age of 40, currently doing his residency program here in Nigeria O$G
What type of residency? If he wants to practice medicine in Canada he will need to redo his residency in Canada but the big issue is there are limited residencies available after Canadian medical graduates have matched with a residency. If he is fluent in French his chances of finding a residency increases and so does his chances of he is in certain fields like family doctor especially wanting to work in more rural locations, pathology, public health and psychiatry. There is another possible training program for mostly GPs in SK and BC that agree to work in an underserved population for I believe 5 years. There are only a limited amount of spots and many more applicants but instead of repeating your residency you are supervised by another practicing physician while seeing patients. A very high proportion of IMGs in Canada never get licensed to practice in Canada. In certain specialties it would be almost impossible to get licensed because there will never be a leftover residency spot after the Canadian medical graduates match to a residency. If your spouse can not see himself doing anything but medicine I would suggest looking at other countries like UK, Ireland and even the US.
That is not the huge obstacle to IMGs. It will be relatively easy for many IMGs under 40 to immigrate but being able to actually work in Canada as a doctor is the huge challenge that the majority of IMG face. Most think that once in Canada and if you pass the Canadian licensing exams it will be easy to practice but the shortage of training spots and budget issues are actually the major issue. Many would be surprised to discover that some Canadian specialists can’t find full-time jobs when they graduate in Canada. That is purely a budget issue for hospitals. Same goes for OR time. Most doctors only get a fraction of the OR time they want and/or need because of money and the lack of support staff.
Due to a surplus of community pharmacists in most of Canada it is harder to immigrate to Canada as a pharmacist than other healthcare jobs that are in demand. You won’t find pharmacists on the list of skills needed in most provinces so PNP is not a possible way to immigrate for most pharmacists. You will need to look at other ways to immigrate via express entry to see if you qualify and what you can do to raise your CRS score.