Professional integration of immigrant medical professionals through alternative career pathways: an Internet scan to synthesize the current landscape

Abstract

Background There is a growing recognition that underutilization and underemployment of skilled immigrants, especially internationally trained health professionals, creates a financial burden on individuals and economic losses for the host country. Albeit a missed opportunity for both the immigrants and the receiving country, no public policy and systemic measures are in place to address this issue. Nevertheless, certain individuals and organizations have made some isolated efforts, but no synthesized knowledge is available for understanding what initiatives exist altogether and how they function. We have conducted a methodological Internet scan to identify the existing individual, private, and systemic initiatives and resources that support these health professionals. This will provide health and workforce policymakers, settlement service providers, and relevant academics with the knowledge base for potential different strategies to address this issue and guide them towards developing solution-oriented initiatives. Methods To identify those we have systematically searched the three most popular search engines (Google, Bing, and Yahoo!) adapting the Canadian Institute for Health Information’s grey literature review protocol. We identified relevant websites per our predefined inclusion criteria, charted the data from those sources, collated, summarized, and reported the results. Results From 280 webpages initially identified through keyword search, we included 26 in our full-page screen and extracted data from 16 finally selected webpages. We have found webpages with information on different alternative careers namely, regulated and non-regulated, available resources to pursue those careers, and what skills they have that can be transferred to the alternative careers. Conclusion More systemic policies and IMG specific and ACP-focused employment support programmes are required. Research and development of programmes for facilitating IMGs’ alternative career support need to be increased and strengthened.

Labor Market Integration of High-Skilled Immigrants in Canada: Employment Patterns of International Medical Graduates in Alternative Jobs

“…It has been reported that IMGs generally seldom considered seeking any career other than becoming a physician [ 7 ], and this usually leads to delay in seeking any other career [ 8 ]. This delay can deprive IMGs of time that may be required to prepare for any new career and obtain any required related work training or experience to allow for success in a decent alternative career [ 9 , 10 ]. Most studies on IMGs only focused on the areas of work [ 11 , 12 ] and experience of the licensed IMGs [ 13 ] and barriers and struggles [ 14 ] to licensing for the unlicensed IMGs.…”

Lost in Transition: The Need for a Strategic Approach to Facilitate Job Market Integration of Internationally Educated Physicians through Alternative Careers

“…The lack of a proper understanding about the job market and lack of a clear understanding of where they stand as job candidates also impacts IEPs’ preparation for any job application or interview [ 3 ]. Inadequately researching and exploring the specifics of an alternative job, failing to obtain the required training/volunteer experience for the job, applying for the job with an inappropriate resumé for the particular job, and being underprepared for interviews are all aspects of the job search process that have been observed to be negatively affecting the IEPs’ job search performance.…”

“…The immigrant population is often an excellent pool of human resources with diverse skills and expertise. Amongst these highly skilled immigrants are internationally educated physicians (IEP), international medical graduates, or foreign medical graduates “who gained their qualifications from a medical school in a country other than the one in which they seek to professionally integrate” [ 2 , 3 ]. In 2017/18, more than one in six doctors working in an Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) country, which includes Canada, the USA, the UK, Australia, New Zealand, and more, had obtained their medical degree in another country, up from one in seven a decade earlier [ 4 ].…”

“…These unlicensed IEPs repeatedly attempt to become licensed; however, only a handful of them succeed, leaving the rest with no choice but to seek other options [ 15 , 16 ]. Many, unfortunately, cannot find a decent alternative career and are forced to undertake jobs that do not require high skills to meet livelihood responsibilities [ 3 , 16 ]. As IEPs may never have considered a career apart from being a physician, when they encounter such a situation, they feel lost [ 13 ].…”

Partnering with organisations beyond academia through strategic collaboration for research and mobilisation in immigrant/ethnic-minority communities

“…As part of our community-engaged research programme on immigrant/ethnic-minority community issues, we conducted a range of studies on health and wellness issues as well as integration and resettlement, including studies on equitable access to health care9–12 and labour market integration for internationally trained health professionals 13 14. We conducted studies where we explored the challenges and unmet needs faced by Bangladeshi-Canadians when accessing healthcare 9 10.…”