Midwife Faiza Abdullah is one of five midwives working at Hawthorne Midwives, which serves Milton, Ont., and surrounding areas.Sammy Kogan/The Globe and Mail
When Faiza Abdullah arrived in Canada as a refugee in 2016, she encountered one major obstacle to her dream of becoming a licensed midwife.
It wasn’t that she didn’t know how to give birth. She had done so for many years as an obstetrician and gynecologist in her native Syria. The problem was that Ms. Abdullah didn’t speak much English, and she couldn’t find a language program that taught concepts like preeclampsia, dilation, and cervical effacement.
“For me, every word in the book was new because I came from scratch,” Ms Abdullah said. “I came as someone who studied medicine in Arabic.
Fortunately for Ms. Abdullah, an acquaintance introduced her to Eva Grunfeld, a physician and professor at the University of Toronto, who agreed to teach Ms. Abdullah weekly at a coffee shop on campus.
The sessions proved a blessing to both women. Ms. Abdullah, now a practicing midwife in Milton, Ont., picked up medical English faster than she would have otherwise, while Dr. Now retired, Grunfeld was inspired to start a volunteer program that she hopes will give her and other Canadian doctors a sense of purpose in retirement.
In September, Dr. Grunfeld and ACCES Employment, a Toronto-based for-profit that helps newcomers find work, are launching Health English Language Pro, or HELP. The program will pair Canadian medical volunteers with internationally trained medical professionals seeking employment in the health sector, whether they are physicians or other professionals. An eight-week experimental phase in which four couples participated this spring.
“This is quite a unique niche,” said Dr. Grunfeld. “I’m thinking of this as something valuable for volunteers, just as it is valuable for recruits.” I’m thinking of this as a partnership.”
Faiza Abdullah was born in Syria and left as a refugee in 2013, eventually arriving in Canada in 2016.Sammy Kogan/The Globe and Mail
Dr. Grunfeld and ACCES are launching the program at a time when all levels of government have pledged to streamline the process by which foreign-trained doctors, nurses and other health professionals are licensed to work in Canada.
Faced with a national shortage of human resources, federal Health Minister Mark Holland and his provincial and territorial counterparts said at their annual meeting in Charlottetown last fall that ensuring immigrant doctors can work in their fields is a priority.
The number of internationally trained doctors practicing medicine in Canada will increase to 24,967 in 2022, compared to 19,625 in 2013, according to the Canadian Institute for Health Information. Their share of the total number of doctors in the country rose to 27 percent from 25 percent during that period.
But many other permanent residents with health experience are unable to break into the sector, according to Statistics Canada. By 2021, about 67 per cent of internationally educated doctors were working in health care, compared to 95 per cent of doctors trained in Canada.
Cameron Moser, director of services and program development for ACCES Employment, said that while his agency and others offer bridging programs to help immigrant health care workers find jobs and obtain permits, the process remains burdensome, especially for doctors.
The HELP program is not intended to dismantle these permission barriers. It’s designed to help new doctors learn enough medical English to get by, with the moral support of veteran doctors provided through dozens of hour-long video chats.
Mr. Moser said that during the pilot project, novice doctors reported that the virtual sessions reduced their professional isolation. “A lot of what we heard from them was how much more confidence they developed,” he said.
Some already spoke English but benefited from learning Canadian acronyms and abbreviations that make up what Dr. Grunfeld calls the “secret” of medicine.
“It’s just part of the conversational flow of two doctors trying to communicate quickly with each other,” she said. “It’s very difficult to get into this if you haven’t trained locally.
Pilot Ibidun Ajuwon practiced general medicine in Nigeria before moving to Canada last year. Although she speaks English fluently, she found her conversations with retired Winnipeg doctor Jeff Sisler illuminating.
The discussions helped her understand certain “nuances” in Canadian practice, such as the emphasis on confidentiality in patient diagnosis and treatment.
Faiza Abdullah has worked as a midwife at the clinic for more than four years and uses her previous international training as an obstetrician and gynecologist to help provide care to clients.Sammy Kogan/The Globe and Mail
“Where I’m from, the cultural difference with most people in Nigeria, it’s more like they want their family to know,” she said. “In Canada, you really have to dot yours and cross your t’s to make sure the patients really want their family members to know.”
Dr. Sisler said that speaking with Dr. Ajuwon would be a great way to continue being involved in medical education after retiring as a family physician and director of professional development and career support at the College of Family Physicians of Canada.
He and Dr. Grunfeld hopes other retired doctors feel the same way. HELP plans to launch a website and begin a broader search for volunteers this fall, Dr. Grunfeld.
In the meantime, she and others involved in developing the program are spending the summer drafting more written materials to guide conversations, including case studies that allow newcomers to role-play their medical English in real-world situations.
It is hoped that the formal HELP pairing will be as successful as the informal pairing of Mrs. Abdullah and Dr. Grunfeld.
After walking from Syria to a Jordanian refugee camp while pregnant with her fourth child and then moving her family to Canada, Ms. Abdullah was eager to start earning an income. As a result, she pursued midwifery instead of a Canadian medical license.
She worked hard to learn enough English to qualify for a one-year midwifery bridging program at what is now Toronto Metropolitan University. She struggled to read medical books on her own in the library every day until she connected with Dr. Grunfeld.
“Without Eva, I might have been able to get into the program next year, or the year after,” Ms Abdullah said. “But with her help I got in in a very short time.”
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