Challenges and their impact on life satisfaction of overseas trained doctors in host countries

Hufsa Kazmi, Junaid Burney, Sanjeev Acharya

http://doi.org/10.34074/sitj.14102

Abstract

Overseas Trained Doctors (OTD’s) face several challenges whilst going through the registration process to become medical practitioners in host countries. This significantly impacts their life satisfaction. This paper aims to report the challenges OTDs face, the impact of these challenges and the role of social support during the registration process. Ten in-depth, semi-structured interviews and 216 self-administered surveys were conducted with OTDs from Canada, Australia, and New Zealand (CANZ). Thematic analysis of the interviews and statistical analysis of the surveys were completed. It was found that limited House Officer and Observership opportunities (observership is observing other medical practitioners perform their duties without being involved in patient care), lack of adequate, reliable, and clear information; financial constraints; time constraints and lack of government support are the predominant challenges faced by OTDs. The study found several challenges have led to a weak- negative impact on the OTD’s life satisfaction whilst social support has a moderate to a positive impact on the OTDs’ life satisfaction. These findings provide a theoretical contribution to the OTD literature by adding new challenges that previously remained unexplored. The practical implications of this study include streamlining information and its accessibility to OTDs, equal employment opportunities, supporting OTDs’ integration into medical employment, providing financial assistance to OTDs going through the registration process across CANZ and amending current supervision policies of training in Australia.