Foreign-trained doctor program brings physician couple to Pembroke

Pembroke, Ont., residents are now benefiting from the expertise of a pair of internationally trained doctors, thanks to a provincial program designed to get those doctors practicing more quickly.

Dr. Helia Ghanean and Dr. Ali Ziaee are a married couple who've been qualified to practice medicine for two decades.

They met at medical school in Tehran and did post-graduate studies in Europe before moving to Canada in 2017.

But, once here, they struggled to get licensed. The pair moved around the country, working where they could while navigating the process and taking the necessary exams. 

Then, the Practice Ready Ontario (PRO) program opened for applications in 2023.

"It was a great opportunity," Ziaee said.

With Pembroke and other rural Ontario communities suffering from a severe shortage of family doctors, PRO promised to support them by fast-tracking international doctors' licensing.

Ziaee and Ghanean were among the first 28-doctor cohort to complete the program.

Ottawa Morning10:04Ontario's foreign-trained family doctor program brings physician couple to Pembroke

Dr. Helia Ghanean and Dr. Ali Ziaee met in medical school in Tehran. They’ve trained and worked as family doctors overseas and, after almost a decade in Canada, are now licensed to practice through the Practice Ready Ontario program.

Licensing process 'quite lengthy'

Before joining PRO, the licensing process in Canada felt "quite lengthy," Ghanean said.

The pair worked other jobs while waiting for their licenses: Ziaee worked with the Telemedicine Ontario network and the Heart and Stroke Foundation, while Ghanean did clinical research and helped train medical students.

Both worked as assistants to family doctors, too. 

Though it took more than half a decade to finally be licensed in Ontario, Ghanean was grateful for the fact it kept her on top of her craft. 

"I think I'm a better doctor [by] doing all this licensing. And I kept myself up to date all the time," she said. "It was a learning experience. It was a journey [and] I admired every step of it. There were some road blocks, to be honest, but at the end I think it was worth it." 

Ziaee and Ghanean had to do more exams to be accepted to PRO, then spend a year working with Canadian doctors to verify their qualifications before they were finally given the green light to work as family doctors.

They're now with the West Champlain Family Health Team and the Marianhill Nursing Home in Pembroke. They each serve more than 1,000 patients, they told CBC.

"We took over some of the patients from previous doctors and also those community members that heard about us and they reached out to us," Ghanean said.

"We didn't want to say no to them. So we accepted those as much as [we] could."

Can PRO meet the demand?

Ziaee said he expects that, in the face of overwhelming demand, PRO will have continued success.

"There are so many patients desperate [for] family doctors," he said. "[The PRO] program definitely can help the health-care system." 

More family doctors means less burden on emergency rooms, Ziaee said. And catching conditions early means spending less money on dealing with advanced illnesses.

Since starting her work in Pembroke, Ghanean said she's already diagnosed several patients with cancer.

Their cases could likely have been caught earlier, she said, if they'd had a doctor.

While 28 doctors completed the PRO program in 2024, it actually fell short of its goal to get 50 doctors working.

Touchstone Institute, a non-profit organization that runs the program in partnership with the Ontario government, told the Canadian Press that there were 191 applicants and 55 were eligible to start the licensing process.

Of those doctors, 27 either left the program or failed to meet its requirements.

The Ontario government told the Canadian Press that the shortfall in 2024 has been rolled into its new goal: 100 doctors ready to work by the end of 2025.