Challenges faced by Overseas Trained Doctors in the Host Country and its impact on their Life Satisfaction

Abstract

Overseas Trained Doctors (OTDs), whilst going through the registration process in the host country face several challenges which significantly impacts their life satisfaction. This study aims to explore what those challenges are, and how they impact the OTD's life satisfaction during the registration process. Moreover, we explore how increase in number of challenges, stages of the registration process, relevance of employment and perceived social support further affect the OTDs' life satisfaction. Ten in-depth interviews and 216 self-administered surveys were conducted with OTDs from Canada, Australia and New Zealand. Our study found that OTDs face several challenges in the host country during their registration processes including limited House Officer positions, lack of adequate, reliable and clear information, financial constraints, time constraints, conflicting policies of the host country's governmental departments, lack of observerships, unethical behaviour of supervisors and interviewers, lack of government support and loss of social identity. In the context of registration process related factors, we found a weak -negative relationship between the number of challenges faced by OTDs and its impact on their life satisfaction; we found no significant difference in the OTD's life satisfaction at the various stages of the registration process and at the various levels of relevance of employment. However, we found a moderate -positive relationship between the OTD's perceived social support and its impact on their life satisfaction. The most prominent theoretical implication of this study is the contribution of new challenges that had remained unexplored in the existing literature on OTDs, such as limited house officer positions, unclear expectations of the clinical examinations, lack of feedback in clinical examination, conflicting policies of the host country's governmental departments, unethical behaviour of supervisors and interviewers and lack of government support. There are several practical implications of this study that can facilitate the integration of OTDs into the host country's labour markets. These include improved information accessibility, equal employment opportunities, amending PESCI examination policies to allow for appeal and investigation of the claims of unethical behaviour portrayed by supervisors and interviewers. Furthermore, the OTDs themselves are recommended to make informed decisions by researching registration and employability related information, effectively managing their resources and initiating their registration process prior to migrating to the host country.