5.0
Opening Doors to Care
Practice Ready Ontario
The pilot program for Touchstone Institute’s Practice Ready Ontario (PRO) began in 2023 and can report the largest number of candidates for any pilot-phase practice ready assessment program in Canada.
PRO 2024/25 Milestones
Practice Ready Ontario candidates are identified through an in-depth application, selection, and verification process, before undergoing a rigorous 12-week clinical field assessment under the supervision of a primary assessor and secondary assessors. The assessment generates hundreds of data points for assessing competency and readiness to enter practice in Ontario.
The Multiple Mini Interview, conducted with each Practice Ready Ontario applicant, is a one-of-a-kind feature among Canada’s programs for practice ready assessment. The Interview adds rigour to the qualifying process, using customized questions to identify candidates who will meet the needs for clinical and professional practice, and for integrating into the communities they will serve.
In 2024/25, Touchstone implemented a leading-edge proprietary portal to screen and validate candidate readiness to practice medicine in Ontario. Enabled by AI, the portal ensures Practice Ready Ontario’s quality and sustainability through efficient and consistent processes, while allowing valuable insights that will support future developments.
In fall 2024, the first Practice Ready Ontario group of physicians to complete the field assessment began working as family doctors in high-need communities across rural and northern Ontario. Intake of two additional groups was completed this year as part of the pilot program.
Practice Ready Ontario will have added 100 family doctors to the health workforce by the end of 2025, with an estimated 120,000 people in Ontario ultimately gaining access to family doctors because of the program.
About Practice Ready Ontario
PRO offers the first streamlined licensing pathway in Ontario for qualified, experienced family doctors and generalists who trained outside Canada. Touchstone led development of the multiphase assessment program, which is funded by the Ontario Ministry of Health and operated in close partnership with the Ministry and the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario. The program adheres to the Medical Council of Canada’s National Assessment Collaboration Practice-Ready Assessment (NAC-PRA) framework.
“The positive impacts of Practice Ready Ontario are far-reaching and substantial. The program enables qualified internationally trained physicians to get to work faster without the requirement to complete unnecessary re-education programs and upholds our commitment to connect people in Ontario to primary care in their communities when they need it.”
Dr. Barbara Lent
Practice Ready Ontario Advisor
Dr. Eric Wong on Practice Ready Ontario
Watch Clinical Director Dr. Eric Wong describe how Practice Ready Ontario is opening doors for internationally trained physicians and expanding access to care.
“It is a goal of mine to help Ontarians get the care they need and deserve.”
“I have trained and worked with internationally trained physicians for 20 years. ... I know their journeys. It’s extremely tough. I have a lot of respect for my colleagues who are in these situations.”
The multi-phased PRO Pathway
We are ready.
After more than 20 years of graduating medical school together in Iran, Dr. Helia Ghanean and Dr. Syed Ali Ziaee were one step closer to their shared dream of practicing family medicine in Canada. A couple and parents of three children, they both qualified as Practice Ready Ontario candidates and completed their clinical field assessment in 2024.
“It looks like diving in the ocean,” says Dr. Ziaee, recounting being invited to Canada in 2013 as skilled workers but being unable to work as physicians. As experienced clinicians and academics, the self-described “team” kept a steady focus on staying in the health system over the years, taking on a range of non-physician roles within clinics and hospitals, and working with asylum seekers through the Canadian Red Cross.
After exploring many avenues and facing multiple barriers, including limited spaces and long wait lists for practice ready assessment programs in other provinces, they felt they “hit the jackpot” with the launch of Practice Ready Ontario.
“This is a blessing. We are so grateful that we are being seen by you. We were ready and you saw us,” says Dr. Ghanean. “We want to connect to our community – devotion is part of our job. We look forward to learning. We serve them and they teach us.”
