Standard of Medical Care

AIPSO notes that its mandate to find a fair and equitable mechanism for allowing well qualified international medical doctors to practice in Ontario has often been met with the argument that Canada does not want to reduce or diminish the standards of medical care.

AIPSO has always taken the position that we want well qualified doctors to practice in Canada. Contrary to what is often said, entry of many highly trained IMDs into Ontario medical fraternity would in fact IMPROVE the standard of healthcare. Our doctors have expertise in many rare diseases that are now manifesting in Canada due to global migration patterns. Some examples include expertise in tropical medicine, leprosy, tuberculosis, osteomyelitis etc..

The argument of M reducing standards of care is a fallacious reasoning and should not be an issue. In fact, research in Canada into the treatment of 127,275 patients with acute heart attacks (AMI) has shown that the use of secondary prevention medications and cardiac procedures and the mortality of AMI patients were similar, regardless of the origin of medical education of the admitting physician (Ko, Dennis T., Austin, Peter C., Chan, Benjamin T.C., Tu, Jack V., Quality of Care of International and Canadian Medical Graduates in Acute Myocardial Infarction, Archives of Internal Medicine 2005;165:458-463)

AIPSO will always insist that any IMD who seeks to practice in Canada matches the standards of the average Canadian trained doctor. We dare say that many of our members are even more highly qualified than that average standard.