CIMM - Internationally Trained Health Professionals
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Key messages
- Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada fully supports Health Canada and Employment and Social Development Canada in exploring how internationally trained health professionals could help relieve the pressure on Canada’s health care system due to COVID-19.
- Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada’s role is to work with immigration applicants and provide settlement and integration support up until the point of citizenship.
- This includes leveraging an extensive network of settlement services stakeholders, many of whom provide ongoing support to international medical graduates and other health professions.
- Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada can support federal efforts by promoting and providing information about potential measures to its settlement services stakeholder network across Canada.
Supplementary messages
- A scan of available data indicates that there is a pool of international medical graduates and other internationally trained health professionals (e.g., nurses, pharmacists, etc.) in Canada who are in the final stages of licensure and could be deployed if temporary/provisional licenses are made available to them.
Disseminating Information and Promotion
- Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada is engaging regularly with the leadership of settlement organizations to understand the situation in communities across Canada and barriers to employment for international medical graduates and other internationally trained health professionals have been raised.
- The settlement sector is ready to work with provincial authorities to mobilize efforts to help identify internationally trained, health professionals, if requested.
- Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada funded settlement service providers in Ontario and Nova Scotia have reached out to provincial health officials to signal a willingness to engage internationally trained health professionals in the fight against COVID-19.
- Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada’s Federal Internship for Newcomers Program has a pool of candidates that are mid-career professionals with strong backgrounds in health and related fields that could assist Health Canada and other federal departments in current COVID-19 pressures.
Supporting facts and figures
- Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada provides funding to more than 500 settlement service provider organizations across Canada to deliver pre- and post-arrival settlement services, which include employment-related services tailored to internationally trained health professionals.
- The Centre for Internationally Educated Nurses is an Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada-funded pre-arrival service provider that supports internationally educated nurses.
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- As the demand for health support rises during COVID-19, internationally educated nurses may be well-suited for assistant positions that could ease the load of their practicing nursing colleagues. Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada will continue to work with Employment and Social Development Canada and Health Canada to ensure that internationally trained health professionals are considered for future health support training programs.
Background
- Governance of issues related to internationally trained health professionals is divided at the federal level between Health Canada, Employment and Social Development Canada, and Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada. Health Canada is the main interlocutor with medical regulatory bodies and health associations in Canada. Employment Social Development Canada has federal leadership on foreign credential recognition through its Foreign Credential Recognition Program. Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada provides relevant settlement channels for information dissemination on current and future measures and initiatives to leverage internationally trained health professionals (such as: pre-arrival settlement stakeholders, National Settlement and Integration Council and federal-provincial-territorial Settlement Working Group).
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