Pediatric hiring is ‘on target’ at new hospital

Canadian-trained physicians preferred for familiarity with systems, culture

The head of pediatrics SASKATOON for the Saskatchewan Health Authority says he wants to staff the province’s new children’s hospital with “the best of the best” — physicians trained in Canada.

“I’m really looking for Canadiantrained physicians,” Dr. Laurentiu Givelichian said.

“I’m very interested to bring the best physicians I can and that they are trained here in Canada, they are very familiar with the Canadian system and they will be very easily integratable into the existing structure.”

The Jim Pattison Children’s Hospital is scheduled to open at Saskatoon’s Royal University Hospital in the fall of 2019. According to the Saskatchewan Health Authority, the province hopes to fund 70 full-time-equivalent pediatric positions in more than 20 specialties by the time the hospital opens.

By March, the hospital had 52 full-time-equivalent positions in place and had made offers to at least two other pediatric specialists.

Givelichian said the hospital is “on target” to have a full complement of pediatricians and pediatric specialists in place by the end of 2019.

But some positions are harder to fill than others. Specifically, Givelichian said the health authority still needs to “recruit quite intensely” for pediatric emergency physicians and at least one other pediatric gastroenterologist.

Before the pediatrics department began recruiting in anticipation of the opening of the new children’s hospital, Givelichian estimates about 65 per cent of physicians had received their medical education in Canada versus 35 per cent who went to medical school outside the country.

By the end of 2019, he estimates that ratio will be closer to 80 per cent Canadian-trained physicians and 20 per cent international medical graduates.

“The attraction with the Canadian physicians is going to be that they’ve been trained in our system, the Canadian system,” Givelichian said.

“Most of our population in Saskatoon, almost 50 per cent, is going to come from northern Saskatchewan. So you can imagine that we have Indigenous patients and the Canadian-trained physicians are going to be very comfortable with that culture and communication for this specific type of population.”

He said it’s also easier for Canadian-trained physicians to be licensed.

According to the Canadian Institute for Health Information, 1,041 specialist physicians were working in Saskatchewan in 2016. Nearly 40 per cent of those — 411 — received their medical training outside Canada.

That’s much higher than the national average; across the country, 22 per cent of 41,541 specialists received medical training somewhere other than Canada.

A 2016 study by researchers at the University of Alberta and University of Calgary found that international medical graduate residents brought many strengths to Canadian practice, but also experienced challenges when it came to things such as communication skills and cultural differences.

According to physicians, residents and other health-care professionals who participated in interviews and focus groups for the study, some international medical graduate residents struggle to adjust to the patient-centred relationship found in Canada, can have difficulties with language, may lack knowledge of how to care for patients of the opposite sex and sometimes have only superficial knowledge of Canada’s health-care system.

Givelichian — an international medical graduate who went to medical school in Romania — said foreign-trained doctors will only be hired in two circumstances: if there are not enough Canadiantrained physicians to meet the hospital’s needs or if there is a “world-class” physician trained elsewhere who wants to move to Saskatoon.

“We will assess the candidate on the basis of skills, knowledge, as well as integration within our medical group as well as integration in this community and understanding the specifics of our population,” he said.

“Everybody’s very welcome to apply, knowing that we have a system by which we assess who will function the best in this environment.”