VANCOUVER - They once drove taxis and toiled in fast-food joints because Canadian provinces wouldn't allow them to work as doctors.
In the 1990s, foreign-trained physicians held hunger strikes to pressure governments into giving them the right to practise medicine. That was then. All that has changed over the past few years as governments have tapped into an available resource during a time of doctor shortages.
In Vancouver on Monday night, the Association of International Medical Doctors of B.C. was hosting a meeting to talk about where it's come from and where it's going.
Health Minister George Abbott said that since 2005 the B.C. government has tripled the number of residency training positions for international medical graduates from six to 18.
"Where we see physician shortages is often in multicultural communities and in some rural and remote areas so people for example, who speak to their physician in their native tongue, obviously it's an enormous advantage," Abbott said.
Dr. Alfredo Tura, president of the association, said the first major change the government made two years ago to was to involve the foreign-trained doctors in a task force with the B.C. College of Physicians and Surgeons.
"So we could voice, significantly, our points, and we were listened to and within three or four months we had an expansion of the program," said Tura, who trained in Italy and is now doing his residency in family practice at St. Paul's Hospital.
"My dream was to come to Canada and practise family medicine in small communities. There was none of this in most of Europe, unfortunately."
At the start of the group's relationship with the B.C. government, most people didn't understand that doctors trained in other countries provide the same standard of care as their Canadian counterparts, Tura said.
"Still now, people confuse us with visa doctors or doctors with temporary licences visiting this country," he said.
"We are a completely different category. We are Canadian residents who live in Canada and we are looking for a full licence in this province."
Patrick Coady, executive director of the Association of International Medical Doctors of B.C., said major immigrant-serving agencies in several provinces - including Manitoba, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Ontario and Nova Scotia - and Europe have contacted the association to ask how it finally managed to forge a relationship with the government.
"The idea of immigrants becoming activists and entering into dialogue is novel," Coady said. "It's not something that happens in Germany, for example.
"The past has been mostly combative and the approach of these doctors was to enter into a constructive dialogue. it's been a bit of a social experiment."
In 2005, a study by the Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences found that despite concerns over quality of care, doctors who received their training outside Canada provide the same quality of care compared to doctors trained in this country.
The study examined the health records of 127,000 heart attack patients admitted to Ontario hospitals between 1992 and 2000. Researchers found that the rates of patient deaths at 30 days and one year were virtually identical for both foreign-and Canadian-educated doctors.
