Health P.E.I., McMaster University partner to fast-track international medical graduates

Health P.E.I. is collaborating with McMaster University in Ontario to help fast-track foreign-trained physicians to become licensed to work on the Island.

The province will pay for up to four seats in the university's fellowship program, which will begin training doctors with international credentials this fall.

McMaster is offering a course that is split into 13 blocks, with each block lasting four weeks. One of the training blocks will take place here on P.E.I.

After the physician completes the program and is qualified to work, they are expected to practise in P.E.I. for at least a year.

Health P.E.I.'s interim chief medical officer, Johan Viljoen, hopes they'll stay longer.

"During that rotation, it's incumbent on us to demonstrate to them that the work environment is a very supportive one, they have the infrastructure around them to be successful as physicians and... it is a welcoming community where they can see themselves and their families come to settle," he said.

P.E.I.'s health-care system has been strained in recent years. In 2024, the province was ranked last in terms of access to care.

The president of the Medical Society of P.E.I. said at the time that the province needed to focus on recruiting and retaining primary health providers.

'Worthwhile investment'

A single seat in the McMaster fellowship will cost the P.E.I. government about $80,000, but Viljoen said it is a good investment.

"The time and effort that goes into educating a physician on any kind of level... is costly because it is being done by highly trained, highly skilled individuals and within environments that are costly to maintain," he said.

"There may be a bit of a sticker shock when you hear those numbers, but in the big scheme of things, that is a very worthwhile investment."

They'd graduate and then we kind of scramble and see if we could find a place for them to fit. This is much more structured.— Haroon Yousuf 

This will be a "first-of-its-kind" collaboration in Canada, said Haroon Yousuf, who runs the hospitalist fellowship program at McMaster.

The program existed before, he said, but this is the first time the university has collaborated with a government agency. 

"They'd graduate and then we kind of scramble and see if we could find a place for them to fit," Yousuf said. "This is much more structured and leads them towards a pathway of independent practice."

This program will see students working in hospitals, but Yousuf said internal medicine goes beyond the hospital.

"If this individual is so inclined, they can branch out and offer their specialist service and consultations to family physicians as well," he said. "They don't have to be limited by the hospital, but I think initially that's where things will start."

Internal medicine consists of a wide range of care, said Viljoen.

"Some individuals may be general internal medicine. They literally cover the spectrum — heart, lungs, kidneys, liver, brain, you name it," he said.

"Then there are individuals who will choose to do another fellowship... and they will either become a cardiologist or a neurologist, etc. So internal medicine, along with the family medicine specialty, those are the non-surgical backbones of any health-care system."