Foreign doctors’ skills will be assessed while they care for Nova Scotia patients

HALIFAX – A new program to more quickly integrate internationally trained doctors into Nova Scotia’s health system is set to begin in the new year.

Premier Tim Houston announced Tuesday that a new Halifax-based clinic will assess the skills of international medical graduates while the foreign recruits provide primary care to about 2,500 patients. The program, he said, will significantly cut the assessment time for prospective candidates to about 12 weeks from the current 18 months.

“This we believe will be very appealing to the people we are trying to recruit to Nova Scotia,” he said. “All of this means Nova Scotians will get the primary care access that they need and physicians will have their education and skills assessed in a practical manner.”

Graduates of the program will receive a licence to practise in Nova Scotia and will be required to sign an agreement to work at least three years in the province.

Houston said that once the assessment program is fully expanded, it will issue about 45 licences a year, compared to the 39 that were issued over the last five years to internationally trained doctors.

The new clinic is the result of a partnership between the province, the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Nova Scotia, and the Medical Council of Canada, the latter of which will provide training and accreditation for doctors who will become competency assessors.

“The assessment clinic will be the first of its kind in North America,” said Dr. Gus Grant, registrar and CEO of the college of physicians. “This clinic will open the door wider for physicians to be assessed for licensure, but it will not lower the bar of competence or quality that we require of our physicians.”

To qualify to work in the assessment clinic, candidates must have a recognized medical degree, two years of postgraduate training, a proficiency in English, and must have trained or practised in medicine within the last three to five years.

Grant said that for too long, internationally trained doctors have been forced to either go through a period of retraining or write examinations that are often designed for new medical graduates — something he called the “wrong tool for the job” in assessing mid-career physicians.

“The right tool for the job is workplace-based assessment, and we are confident that direct observation by trained, skilled physician assessors working together will be an effective way to identify and evaluate competence,” he said.

Grant said it will take time for new medical schools, such as the one slated for Cape Breton University, to increase the flow of new doctors into the system. He said in the meantime, the immediate short-term source of competent physicians is found outside the country.

The provincial health department says 28 per cent, or 52 of the 185 new doctors who began practising in Nova Scotia in the 2023-24 fiscal year were recruited internationally.

“Already 34 per cent of Nova Scotia’s physicians did some or all of their training outside of Canada,” Grant said. “It’s in the public interest to take bold steps to find more physicians, provided they are safe and competent.”

At a cost of $7.4 million, plans are for the new collaborative primary care assessment clinic to begin accepting patients in early January with two physician assessors supervising four international medical graduates. A larger clinic is to be built sometime in 2026 that will eventually assess up to 45 physicians a year and care for as many as 6,400 patients.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 8, 2024.

The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.

VANCOUVER – B.C. Conservative Leader John Rustad has laid out his solutions for the toxic drug crisis in the province, which include cutting wait times for voluntary treatment, a virtual program to connect people with addiction specialists and building “regional recovery communities” that would allow for 12-month live-in treatment.

He told a news conference Tuesday that his party wants to end the NDP’s decriminalization pilot project and that they would hold overdose prevention sites accountable by making sure they are “meeting the highest standards” and if not, his government would not hesitate to shut them down.

Rustad said if a Conservative government were elected on Oct. 19, he would ensure there are “no financial barriers to detox and treatment.”

“This is something that’s critical in B.C. We cannot be holding people back from receiving the treatment they need in British Columbia (due to) financial barriers,” he said. “We want to close that gap between detox and care.”

He didn’t lay out a timeline or what the cost would be, saying his party would be unveiling its full platform “within the coming days.”

But Rustad noted they would have to hire more medical and mental health professionals to support their plans.

“The additional staffing that’s needed is going to be part of a recruitment program that’s needed for British Columbia, as well as a training program,” he said. “We’re going to also look at how we can deliver these services, what level of skills and ability that need to be there for the various levels of services.”

Other elements of the plan, he said, would be to supply housing with treatment, integrate treatment within the correctional health system and appoint an addictions specialist to oversee the government’s response to the health emergency that has claimed more than 15,000 lives since 2016.

Rustad made the announcement at the site of Riverview Hospital in the Vancouver suburb of Coquitlam, a provincially-owned psychiatric institution that had been in operation for more than 100 years before it closed in 2012.

The property is currently the subject of an Indigenous land claim. Rustad said his party wants to work with the First Nation but is “determined” to redevelop and repurpose the site as a “leading centre of excellence in Canada for mental health care and addictions recovery, including secure treatment.”

The party’s platform announcement comes as leaders of British Columbia’s three major political parties are set to debate the key issues of the provincial election on all major TV networks tonight.

The only televised debate of the election campaign will give viewers a chance to size up the leaders and their policies with less than two weeks to go before election day on Oct. 19.

Rustad, NDP Leader David Eby, and Green Party Leader Sonia Furstenau will make their case from 6:30 p.m. to 8 p.m. at the event that is being moderated by Angus Reid Institute president Shachi Kurl.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 8, 2024

The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.

VANCOUVER – B.C. Conservative Leader John Rustad has laid out his solutions for the toxic drug crisis in the province, which include cutting wait times for voluntary treatment, a virtual program to connect people with addiction specialists and building “regional recovery communities” that would allow for 12-month live-in treatment.

He told a news conference Tuesday that his party wants to end the NDP’s decriminalization pilot project and that they would hold overdose prevention sites accountable by making sure they are “meeting the highest standards” and if not, his government would not hesitate to shut them down.

Rustad said if a Conservative government were elected on Oct. 19, he would ensure there are “no financial barriers to detox and treatment.”

“This is something that’s critical in B.C. We cannot be holding people back from receiving the treatment they need in British Columbia (due to) financial barriers,” he said. “We want to close that gap between detox and care.”

He didn’t lay out a timeline or what the cost would be, saying his party would be unveiling its full platform “within the coming days.”

But Rustad noted they would have to hire more medical and mental health professionals to support their plans.

“The additional staffing that’s needed is going to be part of a recruitment program that’s needed for British Columbia, as well as a training program,” he said. “We’re going to also look at how we can deliver these services, what level of skills and ability that need to be there for the various levels of services.”

Other elements of the plan, he said, would be to supply housing with treatment, integrate treatment within the correctional health system and appoint an addictions specialist to oversee the government’s response to the health emergency that has claimed more than 15,000 lives since 2016.

Rustad made the announcement at the site of Riverview Hospital in the Vancouver suburb of Coquitlam, a provincially-owned psychiatric institution that had been in operation for more than 100 years before it closed in 2012.

The property is currently the subject of an Indigenous land claim. Rustad said his party wants to work with the First Nation but is “determined” to redevelop and repurpose the site as a “leading centre of excellence in Canada for mental health care and addictions recovery, including secure treatment.”

The party’s platform announcement comes as leaders of British Columbia’s three major political parties are set to debate the key issues of the provincial election on all major TV networks tonight.

The only televised debate of the election campaign will give viewers a chance to size up the leaders and their policies with less than two weeks to go before election day on Oct. 19.

Rustad, NDP Leader David Eby, and Green Party Leader Sonia Furstenau will make their case from 6:30 p.m. to 8 p.m. at the event that is being moderated by Angus Reid Institute president Shachi Kurl.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 8, 2024

The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.