February 24, 2026
Black History Month- The wellbeing and integration of Internationally Trained Health Care Workers as a solution for the shortage of health care workers in Ontario
I had the pleasure of completing an interview regarding my PhD research for Black History Month with a University of Toronto OISE Library staff member JT. A shorter version of the interview can be found on the OISE Library blog or OISE instagram page. I haven’t posted a blog for a while and here we go, enjoy.
- Tell us about your research!
- What led you to your research and/or what question or challenge were you hoping to address?
I moved to Toronto, Canada more than 25 years ago with the hopes of securing employment in psychometrics or the counselling field after completing undergraduate and post graduate degrees in Psychology in South Africa. I struggled to secure employment until I enrolled in a community college program in Career and Work Counselling. While working as an employment consultant over the years I noticed that the challenge of disregarded international credentials in Toronto was a common experience among newcomers.
My lived experience led to my research interests in minimizing employment barriers for newcomers and internationally trained professionals in Toronto, Canada. More specifically, my overarching research goals of investigating the well-being of internationally trained professionals and my post defence goals of developing an evidence-informed career assessment tool, through an inclusion lens, to more robustly support internationally trained professional newcomers is an innovative intervention towards ameliorating persistent employment barriers. My research holds the potential to indirectly impact the well-being of internationally trained professional newcomers by addressing income, employment, and social status as social determinants of mental health.
The Canadian general population may benefit from this research as the results will provide insight into strategies that might be helpful in retaining health care professionals and other newcomer professionals. Internationally trained professionals could address a shortage of health care workers.
- Has anything you’ve learned in your research surprised you?
The Underrepresentation of minority physicians stood out for me the most. The underrepresentation of racialized physicians is reported as limiting diversity in perspectives within the medical sector, and consequently the quality of healthcare for their respective patients is impacted and more specifically healthcare delivery to minority populations (Jones et al., 2025). Minority communities pay the cost through inferior health outcomes in comparison to patients in the dominant group. This accentuates the need for increased minority representation to improve cultural competency in the medical field, (Jones et al., 2025).
- What’s been your favourite part of your research/research process?
Working with supportive faculty members has made the journey manageable because they understand the theoretical grounding of my lived experience and the lived experiences of my research participants.
- What motivates you as a researcher?
Contributing new knowledge to known literature in my field of interest and making a difference in the lives of the communities my research will impact motivates me as researcher.
- What do you most want people to know about your work?
Integrating internationally trained health care professionals into the health care sector could improve the human resource concern and improve patient outcomes while simultaneously benefiting the well-being of Internationally trained health care professionals in Toronto
- Which Black authors, researchers, faculty members, artists, etc. have inspired you?
Nwalutu, F. I. (2019). Canadian Labour Market as a Dispiriting Phenomenon on Skilled Migrants: Mental Health Consequences on Immigrant Canadians. Sociology Mind, 9(3), 151–167. https://doi.org/10.4236/sm.2019.93011
Wane, N. N. (2004). Black Canadian feminist thought: tensions and
possibilities. Canadian Woman Studies, 23(2), 145-153.
References
Jones, J., Lee, J., Douglas, A., Akinkuotu, A., & Romain, C. (2025). Representation matters: advocating for increased diversity in the pediatric surgical workforce to address health inequity. Seminars in Pediatric Surgery, 35, Article 151521. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sempedsurg.2025.151521
Blog
Career Exploration and Career Decision making for Visible Minorities
This blog post is not based on empirical research but my more than 15 years observations in Employment services. Perhaps one of my blog readers may feel compelled to take this topic up for empirical research.
Career exploration includes taking a battery of assessment tools to measure for interests, abilities, aptitudes, barriers to employment, job search attitude, personality, and other areas determined by the psychometrists, career coach, or trained assessor. Instructions given to the client are that there is no wrong or right answer because the results should give the candidate a good idea regarding career decision options that are in line with the various areas assessed, including the client’s personality and interests . The client is also informed that they can validate the results because they know themselves more than a battery of tests. Assessments and tests are developed by human beings that are not free of bias and therefore validating of results is important.
Assessments are not only limited to career exploration and career decision making. Assessments extend to human resource recruitment, psychological tests, including neuropsychological tests, and intelligence tests. Assessments therefore play a big part in our lives.
Career decision making is valuable for everyone. Visible minorities would most likely benefit from going a step further and researching labour market and hiring trends. Hiring trends for visible minorities in specific industries. In a ideal world free of bias (Everyone is biased), pursuing a career based on a battery of tests and areas of interest would work for everyone, however a good number of people find themselves unemployed for an extended period of time, after investing time and money in areas that are not in demand or areas that are difficult to secure employment.
My observations were before the COVID-19 pandemic. COVID-19 led to changes in the labour market and job loss for many historically marginalized groups including visible minorities. Visible minorities were impacted the most and that means many people will be working on reentering the labour market or looking to make career changes. If considering retraining I would strongly recommend researching your area of interest and realistically assessing if your area of interest will lead to employment. If you are on employment insurance you may consider tapping into second Career training through Employment Ontario. Second Career is a government grant for people looking to go back to a tertiary institution and training in a new field of interest. I would recommend areas of training that require specialized training, if you have the aptitude or if you are willing to put in extra hours of work. Jobs that can not be completed without specialized training, such as nursing normally lead to employment immediately after graduating.
Labour market outlooks are currently good in the health care industry (Nursing, Personal Support Workers, Physicians, Radiographers etc), Information Technology (Business Analysts, Software Developer, Web Developer etc.), Trades (welding, auto mechanic, heavy duty mechanic, plumbers, electricians, millwright, etc), Sales Associate, drivers, General labour, Farm workers, Food services industry, Engineering, Construction, among other areas.
Please feel free to reach out to us if you need assistance with career exploration and Career decision making.
Angela Rudo Marova
My Reflections on Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion in light of the COVID-19 pandemic and the Black Lives Matter Movement
“IF THERE’S ANYTHING the events of 2020 have taught us so far, it’s this: we are more interconnected than ever before. Diseases from one part of the world can infect the whole world. Violence in one city can be felt in all of our cities. Acute acts of injustice reveal systemic problems. Local movements easily become global ones. And the words of our leaders have ripple effects far beyond the word’s themselves.” (Shane Snow; June 3, 2020)
I would like to thank our political and institutional leaders for leading us through these unprecedented times in Canada. Thank you for acknowledging the Black Lives matter movement in the USA and its ripple effects across the world including Canada. I know it is not easy seeing our Country and institutions change drastically because of the pandemic. It is not easy to see some businesses closing down, it is not easy to let go of staff that have held together our institutions and it is also difficult for those that must move on.
Having worked for, and attended tertiary institutions my focus in my blog post will be on discrimination within tertiary institutions. I was raised in a humble environment and have lived experience of low-income communities and the same communities always encouraged children to work hard in school to get a certificate, degree, or diploma because that was the only way to realize a better life in the future. I have noticed that in College and University settings, many internationally trained mature students seem to believe that if they earn another credential their situations may improve. Having worked in Employment Ontario programs, I have observed that piling credentials molds who one becomes but it is not always the answer to improving chances of attaining employment. The answer seems to be hinged on networking, relationship building, mentorship, and finding a hiring manager that is willing to give a person that “looks different” an opportunity to prove that they can get the job done.
The Black Lives Matter movement sparked by a very unfortunate incident south of our borders makes our collective situation more difficult because it is took place during a time when people must be self-isolating and social distancing so that we may resume our lives again with some semblance of the lives we knew in the past.
After reflecting I concluded that we need to strive to create solutions to limit similar situations recurring in our tertiary institutions, communities, cities and country. It is never too late to do the right thing. The right thing, in my view, would be to first acknowledge that we have a problem brewing within our communities and we need to learn from our neighbours’ experiences to mitigate finding ourselves in a similar situation. Systems thinking dictates that, “The actions of one city or business or manager almost has second order effects on the whole system. So, tomorrow’s great leaders will be aware of that and make decisions in terms of the greater system, not just their own immediate priorities.” (Shane Snow; June 3, 2020)
I have had the opportunity to interact and observe black students during my time in tertiary institutions and while many are happy and doing well, others have been subjected to unfavourable situations which might have impacted the citizens they will become tomorrow. In my view, colleges and universities mould young people as they mature into who they become tomorrow, in terms of values and ideology. I was personally moulded by the values instilled in me in post secondary institutions because they made more sense to me in comparison to values instilled during my formative years. I still hold some values instilled during my formative years, and the institutions inform my work ethics and decisions to a large extent. I am concerned that if student experiences in their learning environment are rife with discrimination of any form, that contributes to who they become when they move on to workplaces, starting families, and other areas of our collective community. It also impacts their mental health to a large extent.
Perhaps we can start by having dialogues pertaining to racial discrimination in our institutions (tertiary or corporate) and extending to other forms of discrimination, with a view of building awareness and healthier tertiary and corporate institutions and healthier communities generally. I remain hopeful that one day all our institutions will have someone or a team of people responsible for Diversity and Inclusion; a place where people can safely discuss and work through their challenges. This will hopefully help mitigate our current condition. This is my ask of you.
Angela Rudo Marova