If you're a medical professional from another country considering finding a job and establishing your medical practice in Canada, you may be wondering whether you'll be able to work as a doctor here. The following article contains information to assist you in understanding how to get started working in Canada. You can visit our job board, if you are looking for Doctor Jobs in Canada.

To work in Canada as a physician, you will usually need the following at minimum:

A degree from an accredited medical school; postgraduate training that is recognised in Canada for either Family Physicians or Specialists, eligibility to the appropriate certification exams; Medical Council of Canada Qualifying Exam (MCCQE1); Fluency in English; and a licence issued by the provincial licensing authority.

If your postgraduate training is not recognised, you will have to explore what options are available to you before applying for licensure with any provincial or territorial licensing authority.

Doctors wishing to work in Canada should note that registration requirements vary from province to province and all details should be confirmed with the appropriate authority for your chosen region prior to applying for a licence. 

Family doctors with postgraduate training from the United Kingdom, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, and the United States have training and certification recognised by the College of Family Physicians of Canada (CFPC). Any family doctor whose postgraduate medical training is from a country not on this list will need to speak to the provincial licencing body to seek alternate routes such as a practice ready assessment before being eligible for registration. Practice ready assessments are not always available and will be subject to each province’s admission capacities and requirements.

The Medical Council of Canada (MCC) offers document source verification services for doctors who are interested in working in Canada. Before you can share your international medical credentials with Canadian Medical Regulatory Authorities, you must first submit your medical credential documents to be source verified by the Medical Council of Canada (MCC). The MCC also offers document translation services and a repository to permanently store your international medical credentials to share with licencing authorities.

As noted above, there are a number of steps to becoming licenced to work in Canada, and an experienced Canadian Physician recruiter can help you manage this and help you with securing your future role.