Grant: Cat Gr.: Policy Research for HST - IHSPR - Health Care Policy Res./Systems Res.

The Canadian healthcare system is in crisis because of healthcare worker and physician shortages. Because of these shortages, patients are receiving care that is less than optimal. Physicians are tired, feel overworked, and are experiencing burnout at high rates across Canada. This is causing them to leave practice, or necessarily reducing their workloads. There is increasing demand for physicians and healthcare in Canada and so we depend on people who may have trained to become doctors in countries other than Canada. These doctors who have trained outside of Canada often limit their care of patients within hospitals (and are called 'hospitalists'). In fact, we have thousands of who have trained elsewhere living in Canada who can't fully practice in Canada because there are many different and often complex steps to help confirm their training, competence and licensing requirements. Our project will bring together the necessary organizations together to develop a policy and standards to create processes for hospitalist physicians to be efficiently and appropriately assessed and integrated so that they can practice safely in Canada. Our work will increase the physician workforce and create a process that can be used by all other medical disciplines, beyond hospitalist physicians, to meet the patient care needs in Canada and ensure high quality care is delivered.