INTERNATIONAL BRIEFS

British Columbia Joins Canadian National Registration Portal

The Medical Council of Canada (MCC) and the College of Physicians and Surgeons of British Columbia (CPSBC) have announced that British Columbia is now accepting applications for medical registration through Canada's new national portal, physiciansapply.ca.

British Columbia is the sixth medical regulatory jurisdiction in Canada to integrate physiciansapply.ca into its application process.

The portal is a new, centralized system for exam registration that also receives, reviews, verifies and stores the credentials and documents of candidates from across Canada and around the world. Candidates are able to securely and easily apply for MCC exams, view exam results, submit credentials and documents for verification, access a translation service for medical credentials, and send applications to specific Canadian jurisdictions.

British Columbia joins Alberta, Nova Scotia, Quebec, Saskatchewan and Newfoundland in accepting applications through the portal.

The project was funded by Employment and Social Development Canada, the Federation of Medical Regulatory Authorities of Canada and its members, and the MCC.

The application for medical registration is now open to all new candidates for independent registration in British Columbia. Those candidates include Canadian medical residents, practicing physicians relocating from other Canadian jurisdictions to British Columbia, and physicians from outside of the country.

Once the process is fully deployed across Canada, candidates will be able to use the system to apply to one or more jurisdictions. Each jurisdiction will continue to assess and process applications based on its own legislation and policies.

Additional medical regulatory authorities from across Canada are set to adopt the new application process in the coming months, according to the MCC.

Source: MCC news release, September 6, 2016

Heavy Workloads Threaten Training for Physicians, Warns GMC

Increasingly heavy workloads are eroding the time the next generation of physicians have for training, according to the General Medical Council's (GMC) annual survey of medical education and training in the United Kingdom.

The 2016 national training survey, which gathered opinions from approximately 55,000 physicians who are currently being trained for medical careers, showed that while most of them continue to rate their training experience positively, there were areas of concern.

It found that many physicians in training are working in health care systems which are under such significant and growing pressure that it threatens the training they need to acquire essential skills.

Up to 25% of physicians in training said their working patterns left them sleep-deprived on a weekly basis — a worsening trend in recent years. Other implications of too-heavy workloads include physicians in training being forced to cope with clinical problems beyond their competence, according to the GMC.

The results of the national training survey come a month after the GMC raised concerns in its annual report that large numbers of physicians in training feel undervalued and are working in health care systems which are under significant and growing pressure.

Source: GMC news release, December 1, 2016