Foreign–trained medical professionals: Wanted or not?
A case study of Canada

In Canada, the shortage of health care professionals and the dependence on international medical graduates to fill gaps in the health care work force is expected to increase in the coming years. Over the last half century there has been a trend of the migration of medical graduates from low– and middle–income countries (LMICs) to the developed world. The recipient nation and the immigrating physicians benefit from this migration, however LMICs are losing critical health capabilities as a result of the loss of these medical graduates. There is growing global concern about the large variation among the world’s nations in the availability of physicians and the negative impact of the scarcity of physicians on health equity, health disparities, communicable and non– communicable diseases. Canada, the focus of this paper, sources a significant percentage of its health care professionals from LMICs. The pathways for immigration, licensure and practice within each one of the recipient countries are complex and often not clearly laid out. As such, this paper seeks to describe a complex system – using Canada as a case study for a recipient country.