Canadian health authorities said on Wednesday that hundreds of Saudi doctors and residents who make up the largest segment of foreign medical trainees in the country will remain in Canada until the end of the month, giving hospitals a few weeks to cope with the sudden staffing loss caused by a diplomatic spat.<\/p>\n
The 800 medical trainees are among more than 15,000 Saudis whose government has ordered them to suddenly leave the country due to Canada\u2019s criticism of the ultraconservative kingdom\u2019s arrest of women\u2019s rights activists. The Saudi Embassy bureau that places the country\u2019s students in Canada convinced the kingdom\u2019s government to let the medical trainees stay until September 1, said Dr Salvatore Spadafora, the vice dean of post-MD education at the University of Toronto\u2019s faculty of medicine.<\/p>\n
Spadafora oversees 216 of those Saudis in the Toronto Academic Health Sciences Network. He said the loss of the trainees will cause disruptions at Canadian hospitals, particularly in some specialized fields, but said it\u2019s too early to fully know the impact. \u201cAt the end of the day it\u2019s still 216 people that might not be showing up for work,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have until Sept 1. That\u2019s not saying it\u2019s going to easy or straightforward. It is like people not being there one day, but we have the luxury of people having more time.\u201d While the Saudi government says the students, whose education it is paying for, can now study in other nations, the change will dramatically alter the future for many.<\/p>\n
Some of the residents and doctors are entering their final and fifth year of their programs and the change will derail some careers, Spadafora said. \u201cThese are very dedicated and bright and hard-working people who are studying very hard,\u201d he said. \u201cTo have that disrupted is very stressful for them.\u201d Salvatore Spadafora said it\u2019s very difficult for those with families and leases.<\/p>\n
\u201cAll we\u2019ve done is gotten a little bit of time to the end of the month. It\u2019s not necessarily going to solve everything but it helps the individuals which has really been our focus,\u201d he said. \u201cHopefully at the highest levels there is resolution that we can avoid all of this.\u201d Canadian Foreign Minister Chyrstia Freeland has said Saudi students continue to be welcome.<\/p>\n
Saudi state television has reported that Education Ministry was coming up with an \u201curgent plan\u201d to move thousands of Saudi scholarship students out of Canadian schools to take classes in other countries. The Saudi state airline also said in a statement on its official Twitter account that it would suspend all flights to Toronto starting Monday, August 13.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Canadian health authorities said on Wednesday that hundreds of Saudi doctors and residents who make up the largest segment of foreign medical trainees in the country will remain in Canada until the end of the month, giving hospitals a few weeks to cope with the sudden staffing loss caused by a diplomatic spat. The 800 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":38736,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[87],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-38735","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38735","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38735"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38735\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":38737,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38735\/revisions\/38737"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/38736"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38735"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38735"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38735"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}