Alternate Health Careers in Canada [Event Recap]
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On September 24th, 2014, IWIS organized an event in partnership with Back in Motion, and Simon Fraser University at the Surrey campus of SFU. While the seats were all sold out a day before, still many interested audience showed up at the day and the venue was packed up by graduate students, newcomers, and interested attendees who were looking to find more about careers available in Health sector.
According to the statistics, only 10 percent of the professionals in the health sector resume their job from their home country after immigrating to Canada. 30 percent of these professionals completely forget about their profession, and 60 percent struggle looking for alternatives in this sector. A panel of nine speakers from various areas of academia and industry gave presentations, shared success stories, and guided the audience on the enormous alternatives existing for them in Canada. The panel included the following speakers and subjects:
Dr. Sarah Lubik from the Beedie School of Business, and Dr. Carolyn Sparrey from the Mechatronic Systems Engineering Dept. of SFU shared insightful hints about the Innovation Boulevard, which is a network of institutes, researchers, universities, companies, and the talented individuals who aim at improving the health care outcomes for patients, tend to implement intelligent solutions for the health care system, and focus on growing companies in health care technology and services sectors. Dr. Lubik and Dr. Sparrey then shed light on the opportunities for volunteering with the Innovation Boulevard, the various programs for business starters, as well as other existing opportunities for the interested professionals.
Project management and pursuing a PMP certification is the other alternative for the health sciences professionals, in order to attain the skills to improve health services for the patients. PMP path and its requirements were discussed by Edoye Porbeni, senior consultant and project manager at Apollo Healthcare Project Management Firm.
Gordon MacDonald, a senior consultant at Health Match BC talked about the mentorship opportunities available for the nurses and other healthcare professionals, and presented a variety of options to facilitate recruitment of allied health professionals in BC. Similarly, Carol Jeffs, Advisor at Talent Acquisition at Provincial Health Services presented information about the BC mental Health and Substance Use Services, which is an authority to provide one-on-one mental health services to the people across the province. This agency looks for growing the network of its community partners as resources to support the service providers. Keith Johnson was another speaker coming from Toronto, who is as an independent project manager and researcher. Keith talked about options available for professionals with international credentials to be assessed and be connected to the regulatory bodies, colleges, universities, sector councils as well as all levels of government.
At the final section of this interesting and interactive panel discussion, three of the speakers shared their stories of success to attain Canadian degree and expand their Canadian network, as well as suggesting the audience to be open to options that provide them with the Canadian experience, which are the three pillars of fitting into the Canadian job market. The panelists of this section were Dr. Soudabeh Joolaee- Associate professor in Iran University of Medical Sciences- now visiting researcher at the University of British Columbia, Bamdad Bahrani, a computer engineer and a data analyst at the Nurse Next Door, and Manit Patel an entrepreneur, who lit sparkles in the audience mind to think of ways to start their own business.
Three and half hours of incessant presentation and Q & A ended with enthusiastic networking of the audience and the “full of hope” answers to their questions by the fantastic speakers.
Written By: Zhila Pirmoradi
Photo Credit: Samaneh Khakshour and Zhila Primoradi