Brain refill from Down Under

Your article highlighting Canadians studying medicine in Ireland put a new spin on how Canada might fill an emerging need for physicians.1

As one of more than a dozen Canadian students at the University of Sydney, I also face an uncertain future. I am in a 4-year, graduate-entry medical program, so I am paying 2 years' less tuition than the students in Ireland. In Australia we also have a more favourable exchange rate. However, it is the daunting task of returning to Canada, with its associated expenditures, waiting and frustrating bureaucracy, that puts me in the same predicament as the "Irish-Canadians."

Currently, the Medical Council of Canada (MCC) does not consider Canadian citizens trained overseas as distinct from non-Canadians attempting to immigrate to Canada to practise medicine. In its attempt to enforce its own immigration policy, the MCC has effectively shut the door to a group of Canadian citizens who want to return to their country. We are, in effect, the brain refill - and we have cost our governments nothing in terms of training costs. What we need is a chance to be treated fairly and to be recognized as doctors-to-be who simply want to practise where they grew up.

If the MCC and the provincial governments are looking to relieve the pressure to train more physicians but are balking at the thought of bigger bills, they should look off both the east and west coasts to find an ideal solution.