DandNHill

OK, so you read on here about how qualified GPs move over here with promises of positions in Toronto, Vancouver and so on and end up driving taxis as they can't find jobs.

Is there any truth in this?

If there is, please doctors, we are in need of GPs here in South West Nova as a high percentage of the population has no GP and has to go to outpatients and wait sometimes all night to get treated (yes literally 10 to 12 hours sometimes).

So if you really are driving a taxi and fancy getting back into medicine please contact Yarmouth Hospital

Thank you

cinelight

'Free' healthcare, which is absolute crap, with doctors that barely speak English.

That's what we have in the GTA (Greater Toronto Area)

I'd rather like to be able to a real doctor and have to pay for it, but can't...

Silverdragon102

Not just your end of NS. Very common to see couple of local Emergency departments closed due to lack of doctors although see less closure with one now they are doing the collaborative team

iaink

Yes there is truth in it, and it stems from the way that the medical licensing authorities in Canada are set up. Internship places for Doctors with non North American educations are in extremenly short supply and in many cases if you cant land an internship, you are not going to be licensed to practice no matter how good you are.

The Canadian public may be crying out for more doctors, but I get the impression that the practising doctors who run the provincial licensing associations on behalf of the practising doctors (and no one else!) are quite happy for their services to be in $hort $upply.

Mind you, any supposedly intelligent doctor who decided to up sticks and move to Canada without looking into whether they would easily be able to set up practice first should probably have their bumps felt anyway! However, I can see that if you were a refugee fleeing for you life this would perhaps be a secondary consideration.

Thankfully my area has done an exceptionally good job in recruiting new doctors here, basically with cash bribes and pushing the benefits of the area lifstyle.

cinelight

And Canadian doctors seem to be enclined to moving to the USA, for some reason :-)

Could it be weather and not being in a Communist country ? :-)

DandNHill

Do I sense a little stress cinelight?

We are lucky to have a doctor, granted her english is so so but she can prescribe hubby with diabetes meds and at least we feel that if we need a doc we have one.

Before we had one I worried that if I had something wrong with me I would delay seeing the doc to avoid spending the night in outpatients. Yesterday a friend who doesn't have a doctor was talking about registering with a doctor in Halifax, 320kms away!

It's just so frustrating and something I never considered when moving here!

iaink

Oh please. Communist country. Give me a break.

They go for the money, its no secret. My GP came back cos he hated the greed and having to see the conseqences on his patients that DIDNT have insurance to cover treatment.

Canadas system isnt perfect, but dont hold the US up as a gold standard please. just look at the life expectancy there if you cant face looking at the basic social inequity.

cinelight

gosh, sense of humour people ! You know like smileys at the end of a sentence :-)

Having said that I cannot accept gold standard etc when people talk about Canadian healthcare, crap & costly it is.

Been to US, Canada, various countries in Europe, I know and have elements to compare.

JonboyE

So you can't be a real doctor if you don't speak English?

snowshoveller

as Iaink said earlier, its about the credentialing process for non north american educated medics, which in itself is driven by the variability of medical education around the world. That said I didn't think the regulations out east were as strict as other places

Also back in the (late)80's a federal decision was made to cut down on the number of places at medical schools in the country as there were a decent number of docs about and times were austere so some cash could be saved by training less medics, obviously forgetting that eventually the existing medics would be retiring at some point. typical governmental shortsightedness......

DandNHill

We get quite a few who come here to do their training but they don't want to stay as they don't think there is much here for them...so they leave and go to the bright city lights!!

We need a system that keeps them in rural Canada for x amount of years...

bats

There is a system for nurses in Ontario where is they get their tuition reimbursed if they work in a rural and understaffed area for a number of years.

Doctors have plenty of incentive schemes. Refer so many people for screening, have $5K, home visits? have more $K. Establish a practice in some areas have $$$,$$$.

A big problem is getting established doctors to come here as the powers that be insist the MD takes a resident post. So you could have situation where a world renowned specialist wants to move here but would be asked to retrain. Hmm.

DandNHill

Our GP (then only reason we have one is because we are friends with the practise manager) is from Egypt I think, she's been here for less time than us. Her husband is in NB and she is in South West NS which is the only way they could get visas.
I don't know how long they have to stay in their respective provinces but presumably once they can move on at least one of them is going to relocate to be near the other and we loose another doctor!!!

dbd33

One of my daughters has a partner who is a doctor she met while he was working in the GTA. His English is a bit odd but he's a neurosurgeon in a trauma unit so his patients tend not to be in a state to care about his bedside manner. He didn't really care for Toronto so they moved to a place where their skills were in demand and language not a barrier. They went to London.

You know what I hear? I hear that treatment, in trauma units, is about the same. Some people get lucky because the unit has an expert in reattaching the bit they chopped off who is on duty at the moment of their arrival, some don't, the chance isn't better under OHIP than under the NHS.

If your comparison is of the free healthcare available in Ontario vs. that in the UK then I say it's bollocks, they're much of a muchness. If your comparison is of the free healthcare available in Canada vs. anywhere outside Europe then don't be silly.

cinelight

Where did I say that ?

But if you go in France all doctors speak French.

The ability to be understood by a patient is rather useful