Saskatchewan residents will have better access to physician care as of late. Two new family physicians are practicing in Sunrise Health Region thanks to the most recent intake of the Saskatchewan International Physician Practice Assessment (SIPPA).
Doctors Adane and Adedeji join many other International Medical Graduate (IMG) colleagues already practising in Saskatchewan. SIPPA is a made-in-Saskatchewan program that assesses IMGs on their education and clinical ability before allowing them to practice medicine. The program, administered by the University of Saskatchewan's College of Medicine, has three intakes per year (January, May and September) assessing a maximum of 90 physicians annually.
Sixty-one new physicians began practising in Saskatchewan in 2013, thanks to the most recent intake of SIPPA. Since its inception in 2011, the program has resulted in 113 more doctors practising medicine in Saskatchewan.
"We are very excited and encouraged by the results the SIPPA program has produced during the past year," Saskatchewan's Minister Responsible for Rural and Remote Health Randy Weekes comments. "The recruitment of foreign-trained family doctors complements our on-going efforts to retain more of our Saskatchewan and Canadian trained physicians. These International Medical Graduates are critical in helping to stabilize the province's physician workforce and strengthen rural service delivery."
"While we continue to recruit and retain our own, locally trained physicians here in Saskatchewan, SIPPA is helping us fill immediate vacancies throughout Saskatchewan. This unique, made in Saskatchewan program is allowing more IMGs to practice here and that is good news," adds Ed Mantler, saskdocs CEO. "We are seeing more IMGs from within Canada apply and that is encouraging because we have been working hard at reaching out to this group in our efforts."
The program is now assessing participants of the January 2014 intake, which is now underway. Each candidate must successfully complete SIPPA's requirements over the next four to six months with final results being known in May.
