International Mobility of Health Professionals and Health Workforce Management in Canada

This report examines the role played by immigrant health workers in the Canadian health workforcebut also the interactions between migration policies and education and health workforce managementpolicies.Migrant health worker makes a significant contribution to the Canadian health workforce. Around2005-06, more than 22% of the doctors were foreign-trained and 37% were foreign-born. Thecorresponding figures for nurses are close to 7.7% and 20%, respectively. Foreign-trained doctors play animportant role in rural areas as they contribute to filling the gaps. In most rural areas, on average, 30% ofthe physicians were foreign-trained in 2004.Over past decades the evolution of the health workforce in Canada has been characterised notably bya sharp decline in the density of nurses and a stable density of doctors, which is in contrast with the trendsobserved in other OECD countries. This evolution is largely the result of measures were adopted at the endof the 1980s and early 1990s in order to address a perceived health workforce surplus.