OECD Health Working Papers

ISSN :
1815-2015 (online)
DOI :
10.1787/18152015
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This series is designed to make available to a wider readership health studies prepared for use within the OECD. Authorship is usually collective, but principal writers are named. The papers are generally available only in their original language - English or French - with a summary in the other.
 

International Mobility of Health Professionals and Health Workforce Management in Canada

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Authors:
Jean-Christophe Dumont, Pascal Zurn1, Jody Church, Christine LeThi
Author Affiliations
  • 1: OECD, France

Publication Date
16 Oct 2008
Bibliographic information
No.:
40
Pages
121
DOI
10.1787/228478636331

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This report examines the role played by immigrant health workers in the Canadian health workforce but also the interactions between migration policies and education and health workforce management policies. Migrant health worker makes a significant contribution to the Canadian health workforce. Around 2005-06, more than 22% of the doctors were foreign-trained and 37% were foreign-born. The corresponding figures for nurses are close to 7.7% and 20%, respectively. Foreign-trained doctors play an important role in rural areas as they contribute to filling the gaps. In most rural areas, on average, 30% of the physicians were foreign-trained in 2004. Over past decades the evolution of the health workforce in Canada has been characterised notably by a sharp decline in the density of nurses and a stable density of doctors, which is in contrast with the trends observed in other OECD countries. This evolution is largely the result of measures were adopted at the end of the 1980s and early 1990s in order to address a perceived health workforce surplus.