Chances of landing a residency spot for a saudi

[Malknar]

The reason why I mentioned my nationality is because as far as I know, there had been an agreement that saudis can be accepted into canadian residencies without having canadian citizenship or permanent residency. Also, only MCCEE is required.

Anyway, I'm specifically interested in my chances of getting accepted in psychiatry or internal medicine residency. Provided that I could get LOR from Saudi doctors who graduated from canadian fellowships.

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[Mad Jack]

It's impossible to say for sure, aside from "low." Only about a quarter of IMGs of any stripe match, and of those, almost half match to family med. Out of over 1,700 applicants, only 84 landed spots in IM or psych. Citizenship won't have a massive effect on your application overall. Letters will certainly help though. Good luck.

 

[ProfMD]

The Saudis I know and know of who have done this met two criteria:
1) Funding from the Saudi government.
2) Agreement to go back to Saudi Arabia after completing training.

Meeting these two criteria guarantees that the government does not have to pay for you and that you do not compete with Canadians for jobs.

 

[UBC2014]

Saudi govt pays for their own spots in Canada, i believe these are OUTSIDE of the match. This way, because the spots are paid for by the saudi govt, it does not affect Canadian training capacity and planning. Addiitonally, the Saudis are required to return to Saudi and not allowed to stay in Canada, so that again, they would not take away from the Canadian system.

You are going to have to find someone who has matched as a saudi, or talk to your medical school to find out more information though.

There are many saudis doing residency training in Canada, in various specialties.

My understanding, limited, is that you have your own internal pool, so if the saudi govt is going to sponsor 50 Canadian residency spots, you would compete with all the other saudis who want to train in Canada. This is my guess, i'm sure there would be some vetting by Canadian residency directors too, but i honestly have no clue.

It is a very interesting prospect.