Career development of international medical graduates in Canada: status of the unmatched

With limited residency positions, the majority of international medical graduates living in Canada and other developed countries cannot work as physicians. The educational experience and career development of unmatched international medical graduates (those who are not matched to a residency positio...

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Autores principales: Wang, Yiming, Das, Rajkumar Luke Vijendra, Lapa, Tatiana, Marosan, Peter, Pawliuk, Rosemary, Chable, Heidi D., Lake, Deidre, Lofters, Aisha
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Palgrave Macmillan UK 2023
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9885407/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36741982
http://dx.doi.org/10.1057/s41599-023-01534-z
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author Wang, Yiming
Das, Rajkumar Luke Vijendra
Lapa, Tatiana
Marosan, Peter
Pawliuk, Rosemary
Chable, Heidi D.
Lake, Deidre
Lofters, Aisha
author_facet Wang, Yiming
Das, Rajkumar Luke Vijendra
Lapa, Tatiana
Marosan, Peter
Pawliuk, Rosemary
Chable, Heidi D.
Lake, Deidre
Lofters, Aisha
author_sort Wang, Yiming
collection PubMed
description With limited residency positions, the majority of international medical graduates living in Canada and other developed countries cannot work as physicians. The educational experience and career development of unmatched international medical graduates (those who are not matched to a residency position) residing in Canada have never been studied. Through an innovative collaboration of provincial international medical graduate organizations, we launched an online survey targeting the career development of unmatched international medical graduates, with 356 survey responses entering data analysis. Respondents reported that at the early career planning stage, close to a third had not had adequate knowledge of their career prospects in Canada. Although official resources are available, most respondents found that the information did not match well with reality. After arriving in Canada, educational resources for unmatched international medical graduates are scarce. The majority of them work in healthcare-related fields but reported significant difficulties finding these positions, and there were limited career training opportunities. Among respondents who were no longer pursuing residency positions and had moved on to alternate career paths, we found, unexpectedly, that 69% of them reported previous residency application experience did not contribute to their current occupation, and most were not satisfied with their current career status and continuing education opportunities. In conclusion, the unmatched international medical graduates could serve as a vital reservoir of skilled medical professionals to serve the community, especially during public health crises. Continuing education and career support of unmatched international medical graduates are crucial for their career development and should be an area of priority for policymakers. Career support, especially for alternative career paths, can be built on the current services that exist in most provinces in Canada. In addition, novel online and social media tools can be utilized to increase the outreach of these programs.
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spelling pubmed-98854072023-01-30 Career development of international medical graduates in Canada: status of the unmatched Wang, Yiming Das, Rajkumar Luke Vijendra Lapa, Tatiana Marosan, Peter Pawliuk, Rosemary Chable, Heidi D. Lake, Deidre Lofters, Aisha Humanit Soc Sci Commun Article With limited residency positions, the majority of international medical graduates living in Canada and other developed countries cannot work as physicians. The educational experience and career development of unmatched international medical graduates (those who are not matched to a residency position) residing in Canada have never been studied. Through an innovative collaboration of provincial international medical graduate organizations, we launched an online survey targeting the career development of unmatched international medical graduates, with 356 survey responses entering data analysis. Respondents reported that at the early career planning stage, close to a third had not had adequate knowledge of their career prospects in Canada. Although official resources are available, most respondents found that the information did not match well with reality. After arriving in Canada, educational resources for unmatched international medical graduates are scarce. The majority of them work in healthcare-related fields but reported significant difficulties finding these positions, and there were limited career training opportunities. Among respondents who were no longer pursuing residency positions and had moved on to alternate career paths, we found, unexpectedly, that 69% of them reported previous residency application experience did not contribute to their current occupation, and most were not satisfied with their current career status and continuing education opportunities. In conclusion, the unmatched international medical graduates could serve as a vital reservoir of skilled medical professionals to serve the community, especially during public health crises. Continuing education and career support of unmatched international medical graduates are crucial for their career development and should be an area of priority for policymakers. Career support, especially for alternative career paths, can be built on the current services that exist in most provinces in Canada. In addition, novel online and social media tools can be utilized to increase the outreach of these programs. Palgrave Macmillan UK 2023-01-30 2023 /pmc/articles/PMC9885407/ /pubmed/36741982 http://dx.doi.org/10.1057/s41599-023-01534-z Text en © The Author(s) 2023 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) .
spellingShingle Article
Wang, Yiming
Das, Rajkumar Luke Vijendra
Lapa, Tatiana
Marosan, Peter
Pawliuk, Rosemary
Chable, Heidi D.
Lake, Deidre
Lofters, Aisha
Career development of international medical graduates in Canada: status of the unmatched
title Career development of international medical graduates in Canada: status of the unmatched
title_full Career development of international medical graduates in Canada: status of the unmatched
title_fullStr Career development of international medical graduates in Canada: status of the unmatched
title_full_unstemmed Career development of international medical graduates in Canada: status of the unmatched
title_short Career development of international medical graduates in Canada: status of the unmatched
title_sort career development of international medical graduates in canada: status of the unmatched
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9885407/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36741982
http://dx.doi.org/10.1057/s41599-023-01534-z
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