Recruiting foreign-trained professionals
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* John C.B. Morris, MB ChB

*   © 2008 Canadian Medical Association or its licensors

The editorial by Amir Attaran and Roderick Walker about Shoppers Drug Mart's practice of recruiting pharmacists from South Africa1 raises an important moral point, but in my view the authors' argument is seriously flawed. As a family physician trained in South Africa, I can assure readers that the recruitment of South African physicians to Canada is often far more active than the “passive enticement of job advertisements” mentioned by Attaran and Walker.

I was recruited with paid airfare and travel costs, assistance with immigration, a lucrative contract with free housing and an income guarantee. Hundreds of other South African physicians in Saskatchewan and Alberta have also been enticed to come to Canada. When I was in a practice in small-town Saskatchewan, I in turn travelled to South Africa twice to recruit physicians to join my Canadian practice. The Regina Qu'Appelle Health Region recently went on recruitment drives to the United Kingdom and to the Phillipines and proudly announced its successes in the local newspaper.

The fact that Shoppers Drug Mart poaches pharmacists on a bigger scale and in a more businesslike way makes its recruiting efforts no more wrong than efforts to recruit physicians like the ones I have mentioned. If Attaran and Walker want to take the moral high ground then they have to concede that poaching medical professionals in any way is wrong, whether it is by big business or by smaller players such as individual physicians or health districts.

## Footnotes

*   **Competing interests:** None declared.

## REFERENCE

1.  1. Attaran A, Walker RB. Shoppers Drug Mart or Poachers Drug Mart? CMAJ 2008;178:265-6.
    
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