We'd like to welcome the newest member of our clinical team, Sarath Ekanayake.
Sarath is a physician who moved to Canada last year from Sri Lanka with his wife and children. He is an experienced General Practitioner (Family Physician) who also worked as a Health Care Manager in Sri Lanka before moving to PEI. Sri Lanka is a Commonwealth country which used to be called Ceylon until 1972. It's health care training is based on the British model and physicians such as Sarath trained entirely in English.
Sarath will be starting today as one of our Health Care Technicians.
Although Sarath would be most likely be eligible for immediate medical licensing in the United Kingdom (and possibly some Canadian Provinces), due to the licensing requirements in PEI for doctors, Sarath needs to take three licensing exams before he is able to practice as a physician in PEI.
This will take him about two years. Sarath is an experienced and capable physician who will be a significant asset to the Island when he has his license. Thousands of very talented and highly experienced doctors and nurses in this situation in Canada are working as taxi drivers and in fast food outlets, which is a disaster for them and for our health care system. (It's not as if we have too many doctors and short waiting times for patients!)
We created the Health Care Technician posts specifically to allow doctors and nurses in this position to:
- continue to contribute to patients in the community
- earn a decent income while they wait for their license
- keep their skills fresh
- learn about the Canadian medical system.
- make our medical practice more efficient and allow us to see more patients in the same amount of time, which means we can take on more patients who do not currently have a family doctor.
Although Sarath is a physician, because he is not currently licensed in PEI, he is not allowed to:
- make diagnoses
- give medical advice
- sign prescriptions
However, he will be able to:
- perform simple technical procedures under the supervision* of a physician, such as taking blood pressures or doing simple blood tests.
- enter medical data into our computer system.
- prepare referral letters, medication data at the instruction of the physician.
- organize medical data, such as test results, for the physician.
I'm sure all of our patients will join me in welcoming Sarath to the practice and will wish him good luck in his new post.
* Supervision means that he has been assessed by the physician as being competent, has been given a protocol and guideline to follow strictly for the procedure, and has access to the physician in person, by telephone, or electronically, during the procedure.
We would like to congratulate our practice nurse, Alicia MacEachern, and her husband Winston on the arrival of their beautiful, healthy baby girl Jovi Sophia. She was born on Monday March 8th, weight 7lbs 8oz.
