I was surprised to find out that the match rate for IMGs was much more nuanced and overall more positive than I had expected! Thank you for sharing this. :)
As a Canadian who went abroad for medicine and is currently on the journey back into the Canadian healthcare system, you just boosted my spirits beyond measure brother! ♥ Thank you 🙏
I agree with you 100% about the need for more family med doctors. I'm from Sydney, Australia and we currently have an increasing shortage of GPs (what we call fam med docs here) which has caused huge ED waits and strikes from nurses about the really difficult working conditions for them (too high nurse: patient ratio). So definitely a problem across countries that needs to be fixed!!
Two main reasons I'm avoiding Family Med: 1) compensation is not enough for the workload 2) scope creep by nurse practitioners. I wanted to go into FM initially but am now gearing toward pathology.
I’m wondering if you can expand on what you mean by “scope creep”? NPs who work in primary care have a post Master’s diploma specifically in primary health care (they earn the title NP-PHC and they learn nothing but PHC in school). From my perspective, they are very well equipped to work in PHC settings and help to address a gap in our system (considering that thousands still don’t have a family doctor). I just don’t see why this would deter someone from pursuing family medicine.
@@KaraJonas98 They're not really addressing a gap when they work in large urban hospitals. I've also seen a lot of NPs practicing well outside their scope; ex: "dermatology NP" "cardiology NP". It's ridiculous.
@@cardiacmyxoma4073 For sure, but you specifically mentioned family medicine, hence why I mentioned PHC settings. As for other specializations, I think it's a complex topic and certainly not black and white. If there was adequate funding for health care to begin with and we better addressed the physician shortage, there would definitely be less need for NPs (and other mid-level HCPs like PAs) in acute care settings. Of course, NPs don't have near the same level of training that physicians do. But when they work in these specialized settings, typically they are expected to work only within their knowledge scope and consult with physicians as needed. I agree that they shouldn't be functioning as a fully-fledged physician, but my understanding is that most of them are not. At the end of the day, patient safety and accessibility should be the priority.
I have been a doctor for five years, and graduated already five years. I am preparing for the MCCQE. It seems like the rate for the IMG who is graduated over 3 years is very low. Have you seen some data or reports show why is happened?
From my personal opinion, one of the reasons why FM does seem very glamorous to medical students might be over fiscal matters. When you subtract taxes, overheads and constant cuts on provincial fundings for FMs, you are pretty much left with nothing. Obviously fiscal matters are not the reason why most people get into medicine but its very much ignorant not taking it into account like any other profession.
Daniel, I very much agree with you 🤙 this stereotype of the "humble and poor family doctor" really needs to change if we're going to attract more medical students to the profession. I understand FM docs' reasons for not sharing their salary information - and other doctors too for that matter. However, in speaking with some great preceptors that I've had, I'm confident that I'll be able to do quite well for myself and I'm hoping (and very much looking forward to 😅) sharing some personal salary data from when I'm out of residency.
@@nxtgenmd This level transparency is what really helps bridge folks into the industry especially when they don't have family/mentors that may be in it or willing to share. Thank you for continuing to set the golden standard.
@nxtgenmd I am looking to do Family Medicine Residency in Canada after my M.D degree in 2 years... based on the trend you described here, would this mean IMGs have a good chance of matching into Family medicine due to the spaces available and the `increased disinterest` of Canadian residents?
I wonder what incentives can be given to attract more to family medicine. I wonder if it's because they all go into private practice and that can be a lot more work and less money taking home.
Personally, I think the problem is 2-fold. On the one hand, medical school culture has perpetuated the stereotype of what I call "the humbly poor family doctor." When you're a medical student, there's so many flashy lights from all of the different specialties' cultures that in comparison, FM doesn't seem as exciting (until you get to experience it more). People believe that all family doctors are over worked and underpaid in comparison too their colleagues. And when all of your friends are talking about golf trips with the surgeons and what not, I can't blame students for not feeling excited about the FM by comparison. The second part is that many aspects of family medicine really are difficult - the monotony of seeing the same patient over and over again with an illness that modern medicine really doesn't have a perfect solution for at the moment and feeling helpless sometimes. Then there's the paperwork, lack of governmental support and the almost underlying attitude that they want you to fail. Our system only has so much money in it, and if every family doctor was an efficient biller, it would place more weight on the current system. I'm currently thinking of ways to fix this and think that it should be a top priority moving forward :)
This absolutely does not shock me at all. I am currently in my final year of medical school and have only ever had negative experiences working with family doctors in the sense that not one of them have both a) career fulfillment, and b) appropriate compensation for the work they do. Of course like in any career, we all go into medical school with an intention to have fulfilling and quite frankly lucrative careers in a place we want to live, or at least a career that feels compensated fairly for the level of responsibility we take on and the hours we dedicate to our work. Family medicine in Canada does not offer any of this in its current model. It is naive for the public to demand that our empathy as physicians outweigh our instincts for self-preservation and to expect a service for non-competitive compensation. Even if I enjoyed the medicine family doctors practice on a day to day basis, I would have an extremely hard time finding the logic to choose the specialty today. On the other hand, careers like anesthesiology and internal medicine and emergency medicine at least provide work life balance and appropriate average compensation, even if the responsibility and time dedicated to your career is high. I will say that many Canadian GPs do have other financial supports and endeavours that help provide life satisfaction, but after 10 years of undergraduate education and hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt in education, you kinda hope your career will be how you make a comfortable wage to live a comfortable life and support your family in their, without relying on alternate sources of income. All this to say, anyone that enters family medicine in this era is an altruist by every sense of the word.
I wonder if the neurosurgery down turn is due to lifestyle? Where I work there has even been a big transfer of residents out of the specialty into other areas in pgy3 and 2 years. The call is absolutely gruelling covering adults and paeds and whole citites at times. Thanks for the vid!
That's my suspicion as well Crystal - I have tremendous respect for the people that want to commit to that lifestyle, but feel as though it might be too much to ask for a newer generation of medical students who have been taught about the value of mental health and personal work-life balance. However, hopefully I'll be able to find out more info about it in the future and could make a follow up video. Thanks for stopping by :)
Does anyone who hasn't had a research experience or publications have a chance of getting radiation oncology or psychiatry residency? Is it a negative factor to do residency in radiation oncology in home country and opt for psychiatry residency in Canada?
I have just completed my final Year of MBBS in Pakistan and am basically from Canada! I have to do a one year housejob(basically training) before I am fully complete. My question is, would our year of graduation be the year we finish housejob or would it be from the last day of our final year?
I am a Lebanese premed student. I would like to know if IMG also refers to students who have never previously lived in Canada or have done their medical school outside of Canada and decided to continue residency in Canada. I am asking this because this gives me hope that I will have a good future if I apply later on to Canada. What makes it advantageous for me is that I like most doctor specialities, and I don't matching in family doctor. I like patient interaction and I like all aspects of medicine, treating people, and helping in any way I can in a hospital setting. For that reason, I don't mind becoming a family doctor, internal medicine doctor, a general surgeon, or an anesthesia doctor. I see myself in the future enjoying each one of them. If I had 4 selfs, I would decide to go for each.
IMG means International Medical Graduate, i.e you completed medical school outside of Canada. It is irrespective of where you are from, grew up, or currently live. It only takes into consideration where you went to medical school.
Did you continue medical school in Lebanon? If so, did you do any extracurricular activities in Lebanon that enhanced your medical application or did you only depend on the MCAT score and GPA? What are some that you did if you did any?
Programs reserve the right to leave spots open even after the second round if they feel like they don't have any qualified applicants. Other than that though, the answer is yes :) IMGs can apply to FM if they go unmatched and many will find a better match rate that way
This is super insightful. I think it's so difficult to have to sit o this data without seeing a big push to happen next. But why did you pick family medicine over internal medicine?
Glad to hear it Jason :) I'm going to do an entire video on it within the next few months, but I strongly believe that we need to change the narrative on FM altogether. In short, I chose family because I believed it to be the best specialty choice for me personally. I love getting to follow up with my patients throughout their lives, and love the diversity of patient presentations that I get to see and work with. I also like the fact that outside of getting to run my own business, I can choose to do things like low risk OB, sports medicine and even urgent care / rural emergency med. The work-life balance is flexible enough such that if you want to do 3 days per week and make less money, you totally can. But if you want to put in those 80 hours a week and compete with the surgeons for "who works the most hours," you also get to do that. And then likewise, if you're looking to do that and are smart about where you choose to work and your billings, I'm pretty confident that most students would be surprised about earning potential as well 🤙
Another aspect is that those who enter family medicine residency very very seldom actually plan to practice in a community clinic setting providing longitudinal care as a family doctor. Most friends of mine entering family med residency plan to become hospitalist (working in inpatient setting taking care of hospitalized patients) for much better pay, set hours, and no overhead. In fact, friends who have finished their family residency often solely do this with no plans of ever working in primary care clinic. Seeing a an astronomical, unreasonable volume of patients just to make a fair salary after rent, administrative staff salaries etc. is just unappealing. Not to mention people don’t want to practice in that way that makes it impossible to provide good care to your patients. There’s no way around this unless something changes with compensation and it’s also just plain old unfair to our family medicine colleagues already working in the field.
I don't understand every Health system says they are short of doctors, simultaneously making it difficult for doctors to be a part of em. And Yess we have to be extremely competent but other than it seems they don't want us. Ps we don't want to say don't take tests we are saying if we pass give residency
Hi Abdul I think this is a good question and would just like to provide a bit of my insight from data that I’ve seen :) firstly, there is no shortage of people wanting to be doctors in Canada. Last time I checked each year we see in excess of 6000 applicants for the Ontario medical schools alone and available spaces are quite lower than this number. The issue then becomes the fact that the vast majority of our healthcare is in fact publicly funded. What this means is that quite actually, we don’t have money to just “hire more doctors” without everyone involved taking a serious pay cut. Now when you factor in the 10-15 years of schooling that most docs will have before beginning practice and the hundreds of thousands of dollars of student debt that they’ve collected, it becomes very difficult to find a perfect solution to the problem. Especially when you factor in the additional costs - family doctors needing to pay rent on a practice, hire admin staff and pay for the equipment that they use. As was seen this year, 90% of first year graduate IMGs were accepted in a Canadian residency if they met all requirements. Simply put, the Canadian system does rely on IMGs already in some proportion. It is difficult for people to work here, but sending Canadian students to medical school without access to jobs when they graduate would be irresponsible. Even 5 years ago I had very little insight into the intricate nature of this topic and think that in the future it might deserve its own video. I’m sure there’s still a lot for me to learn too. All the best for now :)
@@HT.100 when it comes to medicine, yes. IMGs in Canada are ALSO Canadian citizens or those that have permanent resident status (you cannot even apply without either citizenship or PR status). As a Canadian who is studying abroad, I do think that I should get priority on residency jobs in Canada (if I meet/exceed the standards required) because this is my home, I know the community and understand the health care system. I also have a problem with rich western countries poaching medical professionals from poorer ones because it leaves those countries at an even bigger disadvantage. Of course I also understand that medical professionals in other countries may feel they could have a better life/opportunity elsewhere and should also be given the chance. Its a very tough situation for all.
@@kasia592 you don't need to worry about the poorer countries. They have surplus of doctors. And as to why you should get a preference over your nationality, that is a logic that I think you use to satisfy yourself but it doesn't hold much water. But everyone always prefers America as their no.1 destination because the doctors there are the best and they are pro-competition not anti-competition
@@nxtgenmd "the vast majority of our healthcare is in fact publicly funded", why don't we open the private healthcare services? encourage more service supply for the public.
I've spent a lot of time with both groups and personally, I think the best EM doc I've ever seen was a FM + 1 who has been working for about 10 years. I think that what you choose depends a lot on what you want out of your practice. The 5 year program docs report feeling more prepared directly after residency, but the stats show that the 2+1 fellows catch up after a few years. That +1 year is supposedly one of the roughest out of all the residencies from what I've been told and the training is intense. The 5 year program also has options for fellowships and even more training if you're the type of person that wants to grind out a 7 year residency (more power to you😅). Far as I have heard, the biggest drawback of the +1 is that its hyper competitive and that if you don't want to do FM but matched in the hopes of a +1 but don't get it, then that can be difficult for you. hope that helps 🤙
I am surprise your 🇺🇸 friends think wait time is shorter in the 🇺🇸ER than waiting 5h in Canadian ER. I have patients waited 20 h in a major city and still didn’t get the care. I have worked in 5 different states. The waiting time is far more longer than what you were told. Also, we are Short of medication and our staff is way overworked. For the amount of money we pay for healthcare insurance in the 🇺🇸, we hardly get proper care. Seeing a specialist takes week or months. surgery is backup. Sadly. The healthcare crisis is global. I don’t understand why Canada don’t match more of the Canadians who are IMG. I trained with alit of them. They are great doctors. Sad that they can get a residency spot in their own country.
Not that I could see. Your best bet would be to look at the program descriptions on CaRMS to see how many spaces were available for IMGs in each surgical specialty 🤙
The Canadian healthcare system needs to be more open to international graduates. Those Medics coming from English speaking countries (excluding US) such as Ireland, UK, Aus, and NZ must jump through many hoops just to even get a license to practise in Canada. And I'm talking specifically about the doctors who have completed their med school + training from these countries and whose training is recognised by the Canadian Medical Council! Having to redo Royal College exams and go through the red tape is what stops most docs from these countries wanting to come to Canada; it's such a shame because Canada is actually a really good place to be a doctor in terms of lifestyle + pay! One way to deal with the shortage of doctors and the collapse of the Canadian healthcare system is to open the doors to qualified physicians/surgeons from other countries with robust training programmes (such as the ones I've highlighted in the aforementioned paragraph). I understand Canada is very protectionist in the way it handles employment of immigrants, but if these protectionist attitudes don't cease in certain sectors such as healthcare then patient safety will continue to be at risk.
Although I understand this and respect it, you need to keep in mind that all Canadian Medical Schools are subsidized by the federal and provincial government. Because of this, they make an investment to train and license future physicians from Canadian Medical Schools. I definitely think there needs to be change to ease the process of welcoming International Graduates and reevaluating the entire system. Having that said, the priority should always be graduates from Canadian Medical Schools. There are also many other reasons that I did not mention (i.e; most CMGs will be doctors in the communities they grew up in and thus will be best equipped to support as a physician, etc.). So I hear you, but there are priorities, and rightfully so.
Agree with the comment above me. First of all I can't imagine the dashed hopes of those seeking to train or practice in Canada, including those who are originally from Canada but pursued medical education abroad. However, for residency, as it currently stands the number of medical school graduates and residency spots are at about a 1:1.1 ratio and opening more international entries would simply squeeze out more Canadian grads who had to fight to be accepted to a Canadian medical school. Especially for CaRMS, which almost completely relies on subjective criteria only for selection, we wouldn't even be able to justify that an international candidate beat out a government subsidized candidate because they were so much objectively better. Also for attendings transferring over, if we set the transfer process extremely low bar, I think medicine would get what I believe happened to pharmacy in Canada. I believe they let in a lot of international pharmacists without carefully balancing supply and demand which contributed to worsened pay and working conditions due to increased competition for jobs. I do hope we can increase the number of doctors but if we do so willy nilly we will increase supply suddenly and excessively which will erode those precisely good lifestyle and pay conditions you mention with medicine in Canada.
Whilst I understand the points made in the comments above, my original point was referring to physicians/surgeons who have trained from countries ALREADY recognised by the Canadian Medical Council, thus making the points regarding setting the standards low for immigrant doctors and jeopardising patient care null and void. A lot of time and consideration is taken by the medical Council of a country when it decides to recognise not just the degree, but also the training pathways of individual countries. If you refer to the Canadian medical Council website they list the few countries (e.g. UK, Ireland, Aus, NZ, etc.) and specialities within each country that they deem meet the high and strict standards necessary to allow for safe and effective practise within Canada by an IMG from one of these respective countries. The issue I raised in my original comment is that if physicians/surgeons from these select few countries who meet the requirements, set out by Canada's own medical Council mind you, do decide to pursue the Canadian route they are often met with bureaucratic red tape. I understand the need to limit the supply of doctors to ensure Canadian doctors continue to pursue their high quality lifestyle and pay, but if there are gaps in the workforce then it only makes sense to invite, albeit a limited number, of doctors from countries overseas where you as a Council have deemed their education and training as equivalent to your own to fill in these gaps. Furthermore, the number of physicians that actually move abroad to other countries are not as high as people would like to think (I'm talking about physicians specifically from regions such as UK, Ireland, Aus, NZ not third world countries such as India, Pakistan, etc.) because money + lifestyle aren't bad in these countries either. There are many reasons other than money that would attract one to live in Canada as a physician. Lastly, when it comes to residency allocations my original comment was never referring to IMGs occupying Canadian residency spots as I'm well aware of the limited number of residency placements and the need to put your own people first, especially when you've heavily invested in them through taxpayers. Thus, I'm not sure where this argument has arisen from in the comments. I'm talking specifically of the select few physicians who meet all the educational and training requirements of Canada, and are willing to move and serve a new population being hit with the high levels of red tape and bureaucracy from a country that's in dire need of more doctors.
@@iRiShKnIcKs2011 To be honest I understand all your points and respect them but you literally countered your argument: "I understand the need to limit the supply of doctors to ensure Canadian doctors continue to pursue their high quality lifestyle and pay,".
As a Canadian medical resident (graduated from Canadian medical school too), I have to echo that regardless of whether we’re discussing IMG residency spots or attending physicians from other countries, the problem lies in job availability and the fact that our system is publically funded. For most specialties other than family medicine, the physician shortage comes from a lack of jobs, not a lack of available personnel. Contrary to some common assumptions I’ve heard, it was actually very competitive for us Canadian residents to find a job, especially a job you want in a major/specific city, after you graduate residency. There’s simply few jobs available due to lack of funding, and the jobs that are involve timing/waiting for someone to retire and open up their position. This is horrific for surgical specialties (as there are limited operating rooms/ OR time availability to give each surgeon you hire) but even in my specialty of internal medicine, it is getting difficult. More international influx of attending physicians will not increase physicians for the Canadian public, it will only make it more stressful for Canadian residency grads to get hired for the same number of positions and similar to all other jobs, we understandably want to protect our own very qualified and locally trained/funded grads. For family medicine, again the shortage is due to lack of funding to give fair compensation to family physicians. Medical students may not be attracted to this field for the reasons others have discussed. And those who go into the field very very very seldom have plans to practice as a community family doctor with a clinic providing longitudinal care - they often become a hospitalist working in the inpatient setting for much better pay, set hours and no overhead. Here, this problem may be helped if we welcome international family doctors with the stipulation they actually practice in the community clinic setting when they come,and I believe opportunities for this already exists but still, there is a certain level of retraining that needs to be done as many guidelines on screening and treatment are actually sometimes quite different in Canada than in other places like the US, UK, Ireland, Australia etc. and our healthcare system works a little differently too. Overall though, I think still the problem is not really supply, if there was a way to improve pay for family doctors as well as to hire more specialists, then we can open more residency spots and then trickle down to open more Canadian medical school seats - and more of these students would be interested in family med. Although I really sympathize with the sadness of being so well trained as a doctor in another country and encountering red tape moving here, this physician shortage issue could very arguably be done without needing the supply of international attending/IMGs in theory - many many Canadian students apply for a very limited number of medical school seats each year. It’s really not a supply of people issue, it’s a funding issue at the end of the day.
I was surprised to find out that the match rate for IMGs was much more nuanced and overall more positive than I had expected! Thank you for sharing this. :)
No problem Lukas :) Glad it shed some light on things
As a Canadian who went abroad for medicine and is currently on the journey back into the Canadian healthcare system, you just boosted my spirits beyond measure brother! ♥ Thank you 🙏
which med school did you go to? i'm planning to study abroad to but dont know where to start :(
Glad to hear it Jay :) Best of luck with everything!
I agree with you 100% about the need for more family med doctors. I'm from Sydney, Australia and we currently have an increasing shortage of GPs (what we call fam med docs here) which has caused huge ED waits and strikes from nurses about the really difficult working conditions for them (too high nurse: patient ratio). So definitely a problem across countries that needs to be fixed!!
Two main reasons I'm avoiding Family Med: 1) compensation is not enough for the workload 2) scope creep by nurse practitioners. I wanted to go into FM initially but am now gearing toward pathology.
I’m wondering if you can expand on what you mean by “scope creep”? NPs who work in primary care have a post Master’s diploma specifically in primary health care (they earn the title NP-PHC and they learn nothing but PHC in school). From my perspective, they are very well equipped to work in PHC settings and help to address a gap in our system (considering that thousands still don’t have a family doctor). I just don’t see why this would deter someone from pursuing family medicine.
@@KaraJonas98 They're not really addressing a gap when they work in large urban hospitals. I've also seen a lot of NPs practicing well outside their scope; ex: "dermatology NP" "cardiology NP". It's ridiculous.
@@cardiacmyxoma4073 For sure, but you specifically mentioned family medicine, hence why I mentioned PHC settings. As for other specializations, I think it's a complex topic and certainly not black and white. If there was adequate funding for health care to begin with and we better addressed the physician shortage, there would definitely be less need for NPs (and other mid-level HCPs like PAs) in acute care settings. Of course, NPs don't have near the same level of training that physicians do. But when they work in these specialized settings, typically they are expected to work only within their knowledge scope and consult with physicians as needed. I agree that they shouldn't be functioning as a fully-fledged physician, but my understanding is that most of them are not. At the end of the day, patient safety and accessibility should be the priority.
@@crowtein8445 The vast majority of NPs work in primary health care and community care settings - not in independent practice.
Can nurses prescribe? Are they liable?
I have been a doctor for five years, and graduated already five years. I am preparing for the MCCQE. It seems like the rate for the IMG who is graduated over 3 years is very low. Have you seen some data or reports show why is happened?
From my personal opinion, one of the reasons why FM does seem very glamorous to medical students might be over fiscal matters. When you subtract taxes, overheads and constant cuts on provincial fundings for FMs, you are pretty much left with nothing. Obviously fiscal matters are not the reason why most people get into medicine but its very much ignorant not taking it into account like any other profession.
Daniel, I very much agree with you 🤙 this stereotype of the "humble and poor family doctor" really needs to change if we're going to attract more medical students to the profession. I understand FM docs' reasons for not sharing their salary information - and other doctors too for that matter. However, in speaking with some great preceptors that I've had, I'm confident that I'll be able to do quite well for myself and I'm hoping (and very much looking forward to 😅) sharing some personal salary data from when I'm out of residency.
@@nxtgenmd This level transparency is what really helps bridge folks into the industry especially when they don't have family/mentors that may be in it or willing to share. Thank you for continuing to set the golden standard.
ngl that shirt idea was dope
🔥🤙
@nxtgenmd I am looking to do Family Medicine Residency in Canada after my M.D degree in 2 years... based on the trend you described here, would this mean IMGs have a good chance of matching into Family medicine due to the spaces available and the `increased disinterest` of Canadian residents?
I wonder what incentives can be given to attract more to family medicine. I wonder if it's because they all go into private practice and that can be a lot more work and less money taking home.
Personally, I think the problem is 2-fold. On the one hand, medical school culture has perpetuated the stereotype of what I call "the humbly poor family doctor." When you're a medical student, there's so many flashy lights from all of the different specialties' cultures that in comparison, FM doesn't seem as exciting (until you get to experience it more). People believe that all family doctors are over worked and underpaid in comparison too their colleagues. And when all of your friends are talking about golf trips with the surgeons and what not, I can't blame students for not feeling excited about the FM by comparison.
The second part is that many aspects of family medicine really are difficult - the monotony of seeing the same patient over and over again with an illness that modern medicine really doesn't have a perfect solution for at the moment and feeling helpless sometimes. Then there's the paperwork, lack of governmental support and the almost underlying attitude that they want you to fail. Our system only has so much money in it, and if every family doctor was an efficient biller, it would place more weight on the current system.
I'm currently thinking of ways to fix this and think that it should be a top priority moving forward :)
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What are you doing your residency in?
he said it in the first 10 seconds
This absolutely does not shock me at all. I am currently in my final year of medical school and have only ever had negative experiences working with family doctors in the sense that not one of them have both a) career fulfillment, and b) appropriate compensation for the work they do.
Of course like in any career, we all go into medical school with an intention to have fulfilling and quite frankly lucrative careers in a place we want to live, or at least a career that feels compensated fairly for the level of responsibility we take on and the hours we dedicate to our work. Family medicine in Canada does not offer any of this in its current model. It is naive for the public to demand that our empathy as physicians outweigh our instincts for self-preservation and to expect a service for non-competitive compensation. Even if I enjoyed the medicine family doctors practice on a day to day basis, I would have an extremely hard time finding the logic to choose the specialty today. On the other hand, careers like anesthesiology and internal medicine and emergency medicine at least provide work life balance and appropriate average compensation, even if the responsibility and time dedicated to your career is high.
I will say that many Canadian GPs do have other financial supports and endeavours that help provide life satisfaction, but after 10 years of undergraduate education and hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt in education, you kinda hope your career will be how you make a comfortable wage to live a comfortable life and support your family in their, without relying on alternate sources of income.
All this to say, anyone that enters family medicine in this era is an altruist by every sense of the word.
I wonder if the neurosurgery down turn is due to lifestyle? Where I work there has even been a big transfer of residents out of the specialty into other areas in pgy3 and 2 years. The call is absolutely gruelling covering adults and paeds and whole citites at times. Thanks for the vid!
That's my suspicion as well Crystal - I have tremendous respect for the people that want to commit to that lifestyle, but feel as though it might be too much to ask for a newer generation of medical students who have been taught about the value of mental health and personal work-life balance. However, hopefully I'll be able to find out more info about it in the future and could make a follow up video. Thanks for stopping by :)
@@nxtgenmd Do you reckon neurosurgery is achievable for an IMG without Canadian PR?
Does anyone who hasn't had a research experience or publications have a chance of getting radiation oncology or psychiatry residency? Is it a negative factor to do residency in radiation oncology in home country and opt for psychiatry residency in Canada?
I have just completed my final Year of MBBS in Pakistan and am basically from Canada!
I have to do a one year housejob(basically training) before I am fully complete.
My question is, would our year of graduation be the year we finish housejob or would it be from the last day of our final year?
I was waiting for this one- crying as a vascular hopeful going into MS2😅
Sending all the positive vibes 🔥😎
I am a Lebanese premed student. I would like to know if IMG also refers to students who have never previously lived in Canada or have done their medical school outside of Canada and decided to continue residency in Canada. I am asking this because this gives me hope that I will have a good future if I apply later on to Canada. What makes it advantageous for me is that I like most doctor specialities, and I don't matching in family doctor. I like patient interaction and I like all aspects of medicine, treating people, and helping in any way I can in a hospital setting. For that reason, I don't mind becoming a family doctor, internal medicine doctor, a general surgeon, or an anesthesia doctor. I see myself in the future enjoying each one of them. If I had 4 selfs, I would decide to go for each.
IMG means International Medical Graduate, i.e you completed medical school outside of Canada. It is irrespective of where you are from, grew up, or currently live. It only takes into consideration where you went to medical school.
@@chaosmetallica ok thank you :)
Good luck Joseph, I'm a Lebanese IMG as well in the states myself.
Did you continue medical school in Lebanon? If so, did you do any extracurricular activities in Lebanon that enhanced your medical application or did you only depend on the MCAT score and GPA? What are some that you did if you did any?
Just be aware that in order to apply to Canadian residency programs, you need to be a citizen of Canada or have PR status.
I'm actually happy for IMG. At least close to 200 matched this year.
Into what specialties though?
@@HT.100 img in general, in previous years, it used to completely impossible to match as an IMG
@@dr.1956 No I have heard that it you work in England for 2 years then Canada recognises that and a lot people work as GPs over there
does that mean that if one of those rejected imgs applied to a family med residency they woulda got a position?
Programs reserve the right to leave spots open even after the second round if they feel like they don't have any qualified applicants. Other than that though, the answer is yes :) IMGs can apply to FM if they go unmatched and many will find a better match rate that way
No
IMG means Candian who studied abroad. They dont have FMG (foreign medical graduate) eligibility
Hello Hello!! thank You for the Videos :) Where can I find info regarding the different residency programs and their average length?
This is super insightful. I think it's so difficult to have to sit o this data without seeing a big push to happen next. But why did you pick family medicine over internal medicine?
Glad to hear it Jason :) I'm going to do an entire video on it within the next few months, but I strongly believe that we need to change the narrative on FM altogether. In short, I chose family because I believed it to be the best specialty choice for me personally. I love getting to follow up with my patients throughout their lives, and love the diversity of patient presentations that I get to see and work with. I also like the fact that outside of getting to run my own business, I can choose to do things like low risk OB, sports medicine and even urgent care / rural emergency med. The work-life balance is flexible enough such that if you want to do 3 days per week and make less money, you totally can. But if you want to put in those 80 hours a week and compete with the surgeons for "who works the most hours," you also get to do that. And then likewise, if you're looking to do that and are smart about where you choose to work and your billings, I'm pretty confident that most students would be surprised about earning potential as well 🤙
@@nxtgenmd I have never thought of it like that. That is such an interesting take. Really appreciate your insight!
@@nxtgenmd Great insight, thank you!
Another aspect is that those who enter family medicine residency very very seldom actually plan to practice in a community clinic setting providing longitudinal care as a family doctor. Most friends of mine entering family med residency plan to become hospitalist (working in inpatient setting taking care of hospitalized patients) for much better pay, set hours, and no overhead. In fact, friends who have finished their family residency often solely do this with no plans of ever working in primary care clinic. Seeing a an astronomical, unreasonable volume of patients just to make a fair salary after rent, administrative staff salaries etc. is just unappealing. Not to mention people don’t want to practice in that way that makes it impossible to provide good care to your patients. There’s no way around this unless something changes with compensation and it’s also just plain old unfair to our family medicine colleagues already working in the field.
I don't understand every Health system says they are short of doctors, simultaneously making it difficult for doctors to be a part of em. And Yess we have to be extremely competent but other than it seems they don't want us. Ps we don't want to say don't take tests we are saying if we pass give residency
Hi Abdul I think this is a good question and would just like to provide a bit of my insight from data that I’ve seen :) firstly, there is no shortage of people wanting to be doctors in Canada. Last time I checked each year we see in excess of 6000 applicants for the Ontario medical schools alone and available spaces are quite lower than this number. The issue then becomes the fact that the vast majority of our healthcare is in fact publicly funded. What this means is that quite actually, we don’t have money to just “hire more doctors” without everyone involved taking a serious pay cut. Now when you factor in the 10-15 years of schooling that most docs will have before beginning practice and the hundreds of thousands of dollars of student debt that they’ve collected, it becomes very difficult to find a perfect solution to the problem. Especially when you factor in the additional costs - family doctors needing to pay rent on a practice, hire admin staff and pay for the equipment that they use. As was seen this year, 90% of first year graduate IMGs were accepted in a Canadian residency if they met all requirements. Simply put, the Canadian system does rely on IMGs already in some proportion. It is difficult for people to work here, but sending Canadian students to medical school without access to jobs when they graduate would be irresponsible. Even 5 years ago I had very little insight into the intricate nature of this topic and think that in the future it might deserve its own video. I’m sure there’s still a lot for me to learn too. All the best for now :)
@@nxtgenmd so what you're saying is that Canada is for Canadians
@@HT.100 when it comes to medicine, yes. IMGs in Canada are ALSO Canadian citizens or those that have permanent resident status (you cannot even apply without either citizenship or PR status). As a Canadian who is studying abroad, I do think that I should get priority on residency jobs in Canada (if I meet/exceed the standards required) because this is my home, I know the community and understand the health care system. I also have a problem with rich western countries poaching medical professionals from poorer ones because it leaves those countries at an even bigger disadvantage. Of course I also understand that medical professionals in other countries may feel they could have a better life/opportunity elsewhere and should also be given the chance. Its a very tough situation for all.
@@kasia592 you don't need to worry about the poorer countries. They have surplus of doctors.
And as to why you should get a preference over your nationality, that is a logic that I think you use to satisfy yourself but it doesn't hold much water.
But everyone always prefers America as their no.1 destination because the doctors there are the best and they are pro-competition not anti-competition
@@nxtgenmd "the vast majority of our healthcare is in fact publicly funded", why don't we open the private healthcare services? encourage more service supply for the public.
How can imgs apply for residency if they've now prc
On the note of FM and EM, what are your thoughts on the 2 streams to ER? (CCFP + EM 3 years vs FRCP 5 EM years)
I've spent a lot of time with both groups and personally, I think the best EM doc I've ever seen was a FM + 1 who has been working for about 10 years. I think that what you choose depends a lot on what you want out of your practice. The 5 year program docs report feeling more prepared directly after residency, but the stats show that the 2+1 fellows catch up after a few years. That +1 year is supposedly one of the roughest out of all the residencies from what I've been told and the training is intense. The 5 year program also has options for fellowships and even more training if you're the type of person that wants to grind out a 7 year residency (more power to you😅). Far as I have heard, the biggest drawback of the +1 is that its hyper competitive and that if you don't want to do FM but matched in the hopes of a +1 but don't get it, then that can be difficult for you.
hope that helps 🤙
@@nxtgenmd Thanks for feedback. I'm not even in med school yet but the FM 2 + EM 1 has my fancy. Cheers
I am surprise your 🇺🇸 friends think wait time is shorter in the 🇺🇸ER than waiting 5h in Canadian ER. I have patients waited 20 h in a major city and still didn’t get the care.
I have worked in 5 different states. The waiting time is far more longer than what you were told. Also, we are Short of medication and our staff is way overworked. For the amount of money we pay for healthcare insurance in the 🇺🇸, we hardly get proper care. Seeing a specialist takes week or months. surgery is backup.
Sadly. The healthcare crisis is global.
I don’t understand why Canada don’t match more of the Canadians who are IMG. I trained with alit of them. They are great doctors. Sad that they can get a residency spot in their own country.
Is it correct that residency requires citizenship or having permanent residency.
Yes
Could tell me what is the criteria
Is it possible to get a full scholarship into medical school in Canada if I do my undergraduate degree in Canada as an international student
I don't know of any scholarship that exists that would cover the entire thing - but I don't know for sure
Any data on Number of first year graduate IMGs going into surgical specialties
Not that I could see. Your best bet would be to look at the program descriptions on CaRMS to see how many spaces were available for IMGs in each surgical specialty 🤙
I have some questions... What is the age limit for MBBS in Canada
I’d love to buy that shirt!
Thanks Muhammad :D I'm just trying to figure out the logistics and should have more info available soon 🔥
Lifestyle is getting prioritized, I guess that's why neuro serg is less competitive
There are no jobs
Best college and best University
first! also just wrote step 1
Hell yeah brother! 💪 Enjoy the well deserved rest for a bit and best of luck
What is ROL stands for?
PAs are becoming more popular in Canada. They will help and take over some of the scope of family practice
so you're defending IMGs not being able to work in Canada
The Canadian healthcare system needs to be more open to international graduates. Those Medics coming from English speaking countries (excluding US) such as Ireland, UK, Aus, and NZ must jump through many hoops just to even get a license to practise in Canada. And I'm talking specifically about the doctors who have completed their med school + training from these countries and whose training is recognised by the Canadian Medical Council! Having to redo Royal College exams and go through the red tape is what stops most docs from these countries wanting to come to Canada; it's such a shame because Canada is actually a really good place to be a doctor in terms of lifestyle + pay!
One way to deal with the shortage of doctors and the collapse of the Canadian healthcare system is to open the doors to qualified physicians/surgeons from other countries with robust training programmes (such as the ones I've highlighted in the aforementioned paragraph).
I understand Canada is very protectionist in the way it handles employment of immigrants, but if these protectionist attitudes don't cease in certain sectors such as healthcare then patient safety will continue to be at risk.
Although I understand this and respect it, you need to keep in mind that all Canadian Medical Schools are subsidized by the federal and provincial government. Because of this, they make an investment to train and license future physicians from Canadian Medical Schools. I definitely think there needs to be change to ease the process of welcoming International Graduates and reevaluating the entire system. Having that said, the priority should always be graduates from Canadian Medical Schools. There are also many other reasons that I did not mention (i.e; most CMGs will be doctors in the communities they grew up in and thus will be best equipped to support as a physician, etc.). So I hear you, but there are priorities, and rightfully so.
Agree with the comment above me. First of all I can't imagine the dashed hopes of those seeking to train or practice in Canada, including those who are originally from Canada but pursued medical education abroad. However, for residency, as it currently stands the number of medical school graduates and residency spots are at about a 1:1.1 ratio and opening more international entries would simply squeeze out more Canadian grads who had to fight to be accepted to a Canadian medical school. Especially for CaRMS, which almost completely relies on subjective criteria only for selection, we wouldn't even be able to justify that an international candidate beat out a government subsidized candidate because they were so much objectively better. Also for attendings transferring over, if we set the transfer process extremely low bar, I think medicine would get what I believe happened to pharmacy in Canada. I believe they let in a lot of international pharmacists without carefully balancing supply and demand which contributed to worsened pay and working conditions due to increased competition for jobs. I do hope we can increase the number of doctors but if we do so willy nilly we will increase supply suddenly and excessively which will erode those precisely good lifestyle and pay conditions you mention with medicine in Canada.
Whilst I understand the points made in the comments above, my original point was referring to physicians/surgeons who have trained from countries ALREADY recognised by the Canadian Medical Council, thus making the points regarding setting the standards low for immigrant doctors and jeopardising patient care null and void. A lot of time and consideration is taken by the medical Council of a country when it decides to recognise not just the degree, but also the training pathways of individual countries. If you refer to the Canadian medical Council website they list the few countries (e.g. UK, Ireland, Aus, NZ, etc.) and specialities within each country that they deem meet the high and strict standards necessary to allow for safe and effective practise within Canada by an IMG from one of these respective countries. The issue I raised in my original comment is that if physicians/surgeons from these select few countries who meet the requirements, set out by Canada's own medical Council mind you, do decide to pursue the Canadian route they are often met with bureaucratic red tape. I understand the need to limit the supply of doctors to ensure Canadian doctors continue to pursue their high quality lifestyle and pay, but if there are gaps in the workforce then it only makes sense to invite, albeit a limited number, of doctors from countries overseas where you as a Council have deemed their education and training as equivalent to your own to fill in these gaps. Furthermore, the number of physicians that actually move abroad to other countries are not as high as people would like to think (I'm talking about physicians specifically from regions such as UK, Ireland, Aus, NZ not third world countries such as India, Pakistan, etc.) because money + lifestyle aren't bad in these countries either. There are many reasons other than money that would attract one to live in Canada as a physician.
Lastly, when it comes to residency allocations my original comment was never referring to IMGs occupying Canadian residency spots as I'm well aware of the limited number of residency placements and the need to put your own people first, especially when you've heavily invested in them through taxpayers. Thus, I'm not sure where this argument has arisen from in the comments. I'm talking specifically of the select few physicians who meet all the educational and training requirements of Canada, and are willing to move and serve a new population being hit with the high levels of red tape and bureaucracy from a country that's in dire need of more doctors.
@@iRiShKnIcKs2011 To be honest I understand all your points and respect them but you literally countered your argument: "I understand the need to limit the supply of doctors to ensure Canadian doctors continue to pursue their high quality lifestyle and pay,".
As a Canadian medical resident (graduated from Canadian medical school too), I have to echo that regardless of whether we’re discussing IMG residency spots or attending physicians from other countries, the problem lies in job availability and the fact that our system is publically funded.
For most specialties other than family medicine, the physician shortage comes from a lack of jobs, not a lack of available personnel. Contrary to some common assumptions I’ve heard, it was actually very competitive for us Canadian residents to find a job, especially a job you want in a major/specific city, after you graduate residency. There’s simply few jobs available due to lack of funding, and the jobs that are involve timing/waiting for someone to retire and open up their position. This is horrific for surgical specialties (as there are limited operating rooms/ OR time availability to give each surgeon you hire) but even in my specialty of internal medicine, it is getting difficult. More international influx of attending physicians will not increase physicians for the Canadian public, it will only make it more stressful for Canadian residency grads to get hired for the same number of positions and similar to all other jobs, we understandably want to protect our own very qualified and locally trained/funded grads.
For family medicine, again the shortage is due to lack of funding to give fair compensation to family physicians. Medical students may not be attracted to this field for the reasons others have discussed. And those who go into the field very very very seldom have plans to practice as a community family doctor with a clinic providing longitudinal care - they often become a hospitalist working in the inpatient setting for much better pay, set hours and no overhead. Here, this problem may be helped if we welcome international family doctors with the stipulation they actually practice in the community clinic setting when they come,and I believe opportunities for this already exists but still, there is a certain level of retraining that needs to be done as many guidelines on screening and treatment are actually sometimes quite different in Canada than in other places like the US, UK, Ireland, Australia etc. and our healthcare system works a little differently too.
Overall though, I think still the problem is not really supply, if there was a way to improve pay for family doctors as well as to hire more specialists, then we can open more residency spots and then trickle down to open more Canadian medical school seats - and more of these students would be interested in family med. Although I really sympathize with the sadness of being so well trained as a doctor in another country and encountering red tape moving here, this physician shortage issue could very arguably be done without needing the supply of international attending/IMGs in theory - many many Canadian students apply for a very limited number of medical school seats each year. It’s really not a supply of people issue, it’s a funding issue at the end of the day.
Hlo brother I'm from India
I think people are becoming lazier and lazier, not wanting to do all the work certain specialities require in training.
🤘 𝓟Ř𝔬𝓂𝔬𝐒ϻ