Incoming immigrants to be included in the database of Canada’s healthcare professionals

Highlights of WES announcement

• International students, permanent residents and temporary residents having healthcare education have to be included in the healthcare database, according to WES guidelines
• Canada wants healthcare professionals to strengthen Canada’s healthcare system
• Capitalizing on the skills and experience of IEHPs demands equitable policies and programs, which in turn require timely, comprehensive, integrated data.

*Check your eligibility to migrate to Canada through Y-Axis Canada Immigration Points Calculator.

Canada to include immigrants in prospective healthcare professionals database

Each of the temporary residents, permanent residents, and international students will be included in the database of the prospective healthcare professionals. This step is being taken up to boost the healthcare system in the country.

Canada is still facing the problem of COVID-19 and there is a need of qualified health professionals so that the requirements of the population can be fulfilled.

Unavailability of data

The government of Canada does not have the data about the internationally trained healthcare professionals who are living in Canada. Because of this, there is a high demand of internationally-educated health professionals.

The data limitation is a challenge as the government has no knowledge about the number of temporary and permanent healthcare professionals living in Canada. The government also has no knowledge about the number of these professionals who want to re-enter the career.

It is necessary to understand the scale, nature, and scope of the IEHP human resource pool. This will reveal the details of underutilization of the healthcare professionals and plans and policies can be made to rebuild the health workforce in the country.

Recommendations given by World Education Services

World Education Services gave six recommendations to the government for the policy. These recommendations are mentioned below:

1. The data collection regarding the immigrants should be improved by IRCC for all classes of immigrants. Following will be included in this collection:
   1. Level and type of health care education and training
   2. Status of licensure in other jurisdictions
   3. Intended occupations for all the IEHP migrants to Canada whether they are temporary workers, permanent residents, refugees, and international students.
   4. Tracking of the IEHPs who want to apply for permanent residents or citizenship
   5. Developing an IMDB database for exchanging data
2. Implementation of Statistics Canada’s Disaggregated Data Action Plan whose announcement was made in 2021 federal budget.
3. Improvement and standardization of reporting processes for occupational regulatory bodies
4. Provincial occupational bodies are required to collect data about IEHPs regarding registration in the professions of healthcare.
5. Standardizing the data reporting requirements among the provinces. This should include:
   1. The number of IEHPs who have applied for professional registration
   2. The number of successful and unsuccessful applicants each year
   3. Disaggregated demographics for each applicant whether successful or unsuccessful
   4. Time taken for the processing of an application
6. Data has to be linked from occupational regulatory bodies to data on employment outcomes.

Willing to migrate to Canada? Talk to Y-Axis, the world’s no. 1 overseas immigration consultant.

Also Read: OINP draw issues two invitations under Foreign Worker Stream

Web Story: WES announced the requirement for record immigrants with medical education