Thank you.
I want to thank all of our guests for their recommendations. There's certainly a lot here.
In my mind, the key to getting more doctors into under-serviced areas and getting more nurses across Canada is recommendation 6: training and licensing for international medical graduates and internationally educated nurses. It's the “Action plan to get internationally trained doctors, nurses, and nurse practitioners to work”.
Certainly, in under-serviced areas, people don't really mind where you come from as long as you can do the job. I say that having worked in six different countries and all kinds of places in Canada that are under-serviced.
Policy recommendation 6 says to “increase opportunities for experienced foreign-trained IMGs to complete Practice Ready Assessments”. I want to ask both Dr. Smart and Dr. Bouchard about this recommendation.
We talked to a witness earlier in this study who suggested.... They thought there were only a couple hundred such positions available across Canada per year. Would having more opportunities for foreign graduates to take part in these practice-ready assessments allow us to get more foreign-graduated doctors licensed?