|  | | | Oct. 12, 2002. 07:37 AM |   |  Printer friendly version |
 Mail this story to a friend | | You can't always come home | | Going overseas for degree makes it hard to return | Anne Kelly
TORSTAR NEWS SERVICE |
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| ANDREW STAWICKI/TORONTO STAR |
| NOVA SCOTIA'S GAIN: Dr. Steve Choi is working in Halifax but is trying to get back closer to his Mississauga home. |
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Shaheen Morar will soon find out if his long quest to practise family medicine with his father will take several more months or several more years.The 30-year-old, trained as a general practitioner at the University of Glasgow in Scotland, spent the last year serving short-term locums while trying to find a way through the narrow door Ontario offers to foreign-trained medical graduates."I'm not giving up," he said in a phone interview. "I know I'll get there soon."His arrival is eagerly awaited in Cambridge, where 15 per cent of its 100,000 people don't have a family doctor. Disappointed after being cut from the final round of selections last spring for the province's new program to fast-track foreign-trained doctors into practice, Morar is trying another avenue.He has applied to the Ontario College of Physicians and Surgeons for a licence although he lacks the required year of Canadian experience. The college's registration committee looks at special circumstances on a case-by-case basis and in 2001 approved 156 of 180 applications. Morar found a Cambridge family doctor - other than his father Champaklal - who would directly supervise him for six months to a year while assessing his skills and he hopes the college will grant him a licence based on those conditions.If rejected, Morar will likely head to a province like Manitoba, which quickly assesses and licences international medical graduates, to gain the experience Ontario requires.The elder Morar, who suffered a heart attack two years ago, is struggling under the weight of a 4,000-patient caseload in Cambridge and his son is frustrated that he can't help."I might have to go all the way to the middle of nowhere and spend two or three years away from my family," he said. "Why can't I come straight to Ontario?"There are hundreds of young Ontario citizens like Morar who attended medical school in other countries because the number of places in Canadian faculties was slashed in the 1990s. Now, repatriating those graduates of medical schools with Canadian-like standards is being considered.David Naylor, dean of medicine at the University of Toronto, said scores of doctors from first-rate medical schools in countries like Australia, Britain and Ireland could return annually. "I would instinctively have a high degree of confidence that those trainees coming out of their programs would slot very smoothly into Canadian residency programs," Naylor said. But first the province would have to agree to pay for the additional residencies.Currently, they compete with about 400 other foreign-trained doctors who apply annually for 50 spots in Ontario's pre-residency program. It lasts 36 to 48 weeks. If successful there, they're eligible for one of 50 residencies that will require them to retake two years of training in family medicine or five years in a specialty (not necessarily their preferred specialty).An easing of Ontario policy would be too late for Steve Choi, who grew up in Mississauga and trained as a family physician in Australia at the University of Sydney. He's working his way back via Nova Scotia.Rather than try for Ontario's unpaid pre-residency program, but not be assured of a residency in a specialty he wanted, Choi, 36, found a two-year residency at Dalhousie University in Halifax and started in July.Ontario's loss could be Nova Scotia's gain. Although his initial plan was to work his way back here, Choi said he's falling in love with Halifax and can't promise he won't decide to stay. "It's a beautiful city. I love it."Greg Hall is another overseas medical student crossing his figures over the proposed repatriation program. He has just entered his third year at the University of Sydney and hopes to become a pediatrician. As a boy, Hall spent hours playing in the cancer ward playroom at the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto where his mother, Sheila Weitzman, is a pediatric oncologist. Hall said there are 29 Canadians in his year alone at the University of Sydney."Out of 29, 25 of them will want to come back to Canada," he said. But with residencies much more plentiful in the United States, he's not sure it will happen. "The majority right now may end up in the States and not come back because once they start there, they may just settle in." He thinks most would work in an under-serviced rural area, at least temporarily. "I would say the majority would be happy to get into Canada any way they can."
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