Fun Things About Canada
In This Issue:
- Why work with Canada Medical Careers
- Halloween in Canada
- Fun things to know about living in Canada
- Practice Opportunities across Canada
- How MCC Practice Tests Help with MCCQE1
Featured Opportunity
Regina - more hours of sunshine than any other city in Canada
Canada is like many countries worldwide. The major cities have a high cost of living and the lesser-known cities and towns have a much lower cost of living. While this is obvious, the benefits should be explored. In a small Canadian city, you can purchase a fantastic newly built home with 4-5 bedrooms for the price of an older one-bedroom flat in a city like Vancouver or Toronto. With the day-to-day savings on your purchases, choosing a smaller city or town can quickly add to your savings account.
General practitioners in smaller cities are in a unique situation as your payments from the government health plan are usually the same as a general practitioner in a major city. The gap between income and expenses can be significant.
REGINA, the capital city of Saskatchewan is a good example. You can purchase a nice 4-bedroom, 3-bathroom home that is 175 square metres in size, with a 2-car garage for $300,000 CDN or 175,000 British pounds. A one-bedroom flat in Vancouver will cost $1 million CDN.
The clinic where you will practice is very modern, open 365 days a year and offers a flexible schedule and gross billings of up to $500,000 CDN. Contact John for more details. [email protected]
Why work with Canada Medical Careers?
We have recruited a large number of general practitioners from the UK, Ireland, Australia and the USA and from the responses to a recent survey, we discovered there are several key reasons physicians choose Canada Medical Careers to assist them with their move to Canada.
- Personal service from the first phone call to the first day of practice in Canada.
- Knowledge of the multitude of medical licensing regulations across Canada.
- Payment of immigration legal fees for whole families.
- Access to an immigration lawyer to answer questions.
- Clients who are professional and supportive of their physicians.
Halloween in Canada
A doctor who arrived in Canada last year from the UK observed, “I had never been to Canada before and was shocked as I left the airport for the hotel. Virtually everyone was wearing a mask and costume. The taxi driver looked like Frankenstein and the desk clerk at the hotel looked like a vampire. Halloween in some form has been celebrated for centuries in the UK but I have never seen anything like this! There were excessive decorations on every home and office and both children and adults dress in costumes of every type including princesses, movie stars, politicians, and even Batman.”
Halloween in Canada is eagerly anticipated each year by children and adults. Children go door-to-door with their parents collecting candy or money for a charity. Adults have parties that get quite wild!
Fun things to know about Canada
As a British physician in Canada, you never want to ask a patient to return to the surgery in two weeks. You will scare them as the word surgery implies being cut with a scalpel. We call our doctor’s office a clinic.
In the UK you might apply a plaster, but no Canadian will understand this. We always say bandage or Band-Aid.
In the UK the emergency number is 999, in Australia it is 000, in Ireland it is 112, but in Canada it is 911.
Canadian 1 dollar and 2 dollar coins
Canadian money is measured in dollars and cents. We have five, ten, twenty, fifty, and one hundred dollar bills. The bills are made from a plastic-like polymer, not paper, so they last longer. If someone offers you a Loonie that means one dollar and a Toonie is two dollars and each is a large coin. We don’t have one cent pennies, all prices are rounded up or down so $4.57 becomes $4.60.
You will definitely need a credit card to rent a hotel room or car. Debit or cash cards won’t do.
Canada is so large it has six time zones. When we eat breakfast in the west, they have eaten lunch in the east.
Don’t order crisps, order potato chips. Don’t order a jacket potato, order a baked potato.
To a Canadian a jumper is someone who competes in the Olympics and not a sweater.
Want Canadians to look at you strangely, tell them to wait a fortnight.
Practice Opportunities Across Canada
Regina is a great place to be a GP. The city has business-friendly policies and a strong economy that have generally been reflected in a growing small business sector. In the last five years, small business employment in the health care and social assistance sector increased by 10.6%, and accommodation and food services increased by 9.7%.
Employees are sharing in the benefits of a prosperous small business sector. Over the last 10 years, nominal wages paid by Saskatchewan small businesses grew by 22.4%, compared to 2010.
Saskatchewan has the highest number of small businesses, per capita, of any province in Canada. Its capital city is Regina.
Saskatchewan’s population breakdown is:
- Total population: 1,261,000
- Rural population: 33.2%
- Seniors (65+): 15.0%
- Immigrant population: 10.5%
- Aboriginal population: 16.5%
How MCC Practice Tests Help with MCCQE1
The MCCQE1 must be written by IMG’s planning to practice in Canada. There are numerous options as a study resource. Highly recommended are the practice test materials offered by the Medical Council of Canada (MCC). The MCC offers the following information:
The CDM portion of the exam presents clinical situations and two types of questions about them:
“short-menu,” a list of several options from which the candidate selects one or many, and“write-in,” for which the candidate types their answers.
Practice test products are designed to help candidates develop familiarity with both of these question formats.
“It does prepare candidates to understand what the modality is,” explains Dr. Claire Touchie, MCC’s Chief Medical Education Officer, as well as orienting test-takers to the content.
Practice tests go through the same development process as the exam. The questions are developed by MCC subject-matter experts and refined and approved by test committees.” – Ms. Layal Younes, Project Lead for Online Assessment, MCC
This differs from practice tests developed by companies outside of the MCC. “Some have examples of CDM, but they are not developed by MCC content experts and may not be representative of the exam,” cautions Ms. Younes.
Candidates complete the Practice Tests on a website with many of the same functions on the actual exam — highlighting, striking-through, and the ability to flag and review previous questions.
The correct answers are provided in the Practice Tests. An exception to this is the write-in questions, for which the Practice Tests provide a marking key. Seeing the marking key allows candidates to mark themselves and provides an understanding of what MCC is looking for in a good answer to a write-in question.
Trouble Completing Your PhysiciansApply.ca Account?
As recruiters, we discovered that many physicians have difficulty supplying their information this online service. A simple error, like not scanning all four corners of a document can cause rejection. Which documents do you have notarized? How do you submit your documents?
We have created an explanatory video that is yours FREE, just by asking. Contact [email protected] to receive your link!
If you are serious about practicing medicine in Canada the first thing you should do is open an account with PhysiciansApply.ca. It is an online portal operated under the auspices of the Medical Council of Canada (similar to the GMC in the UK). Every doctor coming to Canada must have an account. This is where your credentials must be verified. These credentials include your passport, medical degrees and more. Every province and territory of Canada has a regulatory authority to handle physician licensing and these authorities (Colleges) will need to access your PhysiciansApply.ca account before you can be licensed in Canada.
Don’t wait! Some documents can be verified quickly, and others may take some time, especially if you attended medical school in a country that is slow to respond to inquiries from Canada.
If you are an IMG, licensing in Canada as a physician simply does not happen without a PhysiciansApply.ca account.
MRCGP and Family Practice Exams in Canada
The College of Family Physicians of Canada is the recognized licensing authority for family physicians in Canada. Those physicians coming from the UK, Ireland, Australia, or the USA will usually not have to write the examination required to practice as a General Practitioner in Canada. Verification of your MRCGP, MICGP, FRACGP, FACRRM, or DABFM will be required. For more information on this certification visit CFPC.ca and check out the Education and Professional Development section. Members in good standing will use the CCFP certification.
We like questions!
It’s likely that you will have questions along your journey to practicing in Canada. Don’t hesitate to contact John Livingstone at: [email protected]
Or call WhatsApp +1 250-885-8802 (9 AM – 6 PM Pacific Time)