FIlipe Santos MD

Most fellowship pages never tell you if the position is paid.

You can spend weeks shortlisting programs, writing to directors, and preparing documents, and still not know whether the fellowship comes with a salary or expects you to bring your own funding. For an internationally trained physician, that difference decides whether the plan works at all.

So I built the Fellowship Finder.

It is a searchable directory of Canadian clinical fellowships, built for ITPs. Every record is checked against the program’s own published pages and stamped with the date it was verified.

What is inside:

→ 1,892 fellowship programs across 15 specialties, from Anesthesiology to Vascular Surgery.
→ A funding filter. Each program shows funding confirmed, mixed, not funded, or not stated on its pages.
→ Filters for province, university, intake year, language, and subspecialty.
→ Program director and coordinator contacts, and how to apply, in one record.

→ Three full records are open free in every specialty, so you can see exactly what you get before paying anything.

Know the funding answer before you apply, not after!

Comment “IMGFELLOW” for the link in your DM.

Save this for your fellowship plan. Send it to an ITP applying this cycle.

We checked 1,892 Canadian fellowship programs. Outside Toronto, 8% say on their own pages that the position is paid.

Whether a fellowship pays can decide whether the route is open to an internationally trained physician. It is also one of the hardest things to find out, because most program pages do not mention money at all.

So I published what every page in the directory actually says.

The Fellowship Finder checks each program against its own published pages and stamps the date it was verified. The funding breakdown from that work is free to read on my site.

What the pages say:

→ 1,892 programs checked, across 15 specialties.
→ 706 say nothing about pay anywhere on their pages.
→ 511 state confirmed funding. 396 of those are covered by a single university policy.
→ University of Toronto requires every clinical fellow it appoints to be paid at or above the PGY3 rate, and does not accept self-funded fellowships.
→ Outside Toronto, 115 programs state on their own pages that the position is funded.

→ Ask whether the position is funded for an internationally trained physician, not whether it is funded.

Ask about funding before you apply.

Comment “FUNDS” for the link in your DM.

Save this for your fellowship shortlist. Send it to a specialist planning one.

We checked 1,892 Canadian fellowship program pages. 706 say nothing about whether the fellow gets paid.

A fellowship is one of the main routes internationally trained specialists use to reach Canada, and whether the position pays can decide whether the route is possible at all. The answer is often hard to find: fellow salaries are usually set centrally by each university’s postgraduate medical education office, so many program pages never mention money.

So I published the numbers.

Every program in the Fellowship Finder is verified against the program’s own published pages. The funding picture from that work is now a public page on my website, and it updates itself as new programs are added and verified.

What the data shows, as of this week:

→ 1,892 programs verified so far, across 15 specialties.
→ 511 state confirmed funding for the fellow. That is 27%.
→ 399 state the fellow must bring external funding.
→ 276 are mixed: funded for some candidates, external funding for others.
→ 706 say nothing about pay on their pages.

→ The page is public, free to cite, and always current.

Ask about funding before you apply.

Comment “FUNDS” for the link in your DM.

Save this for your fellowship shortlist. Send it to a specialist planning one.

A family physician trained abroad, screened against all nine Canadian assessment programs. Seven said no. Two said yes.

Take a common profile. A family physician trained abroad, with 1 year of formal postgraduate training. All 7 core rotations: 8 weeks of family medicine, 4 weeks in each of the others. 2 years of independent practice, working full time today. MCCQE Part I and NAC passed. English test done. No permanent residency yet. No French. He wanted Ontario or British Columbia.

Ontario requires permanent residency at application. BC requires 2 years of family medicine training. Quebec requires the same, plus French. Saskatchewan, Manitoba, and Newfoundland and Labrador ask for more years of training or practice than he has today. And Alberta requires 16 weeks of family medicine within the training. He has 8. Seven programs, ruled out on hard requirements.

That leaves two. NS PACE in Nova Scotia, eligible now, on paper, where his 8 weeks of family medicine are enough. And PRA-NB in New Brunswick, where all 7 of his rotations meet the bar and one gap remains: the TDM examination. One exam takes this profile from one open program to two.

I built Find Your Path to do exactly this. It is a free screener that reads your training, your rotations week by week, your practice record, exams, immigration status, and prior attempts against all nine family medicine assessment programs. It shows which say yes, which are close, and what closes each gap.

What it checks:

→ Training years, and rotations week by week.
→ Independent practice and recent clinical hours.
→ MCCQE, NAC, TDM, and USMLE results.
→ Immigration status, French, and prior PRA attempts.
→ The provinces you would move to.

→ Your list may be different. It changes with one answer.

Stop guessing your eligibility.

Comment FSAPP and I will send you the app in a DM. Run your own profile and figure out your pathway. Find Your Path is free, on filipesantosmd.com and in the Path to Practice app.

Save this for your licensing plan. Send it to a physician who thinks Ontario is the only route.

41 calculators. 1892 fellowships. A daily MCQ.
All of it now fits in your pocket.

Preparing for Canadian licensure can mean living across a dozen browser tabs. A fellowship list in one, a deadline calendar in another, guidelines somewhere else. The information exists. It is just never in one place.

So I built the Path to Practice app.

It is free on the App Store now, built for internationally trained physicians at every stage of the journey, from first exam to first practice.

What is inside:

→ 41 clinical calculators, tested and offline.
→ A fellowship searcher with 1892 Canadian programs across 15 specialties, re-verified quarterly.
→ A daily MCQ to keep your exam prep moving.
→ Radar, tracking MCC, CaRMS, and college dates so the next deadline never surprises you.
→ Physician news: licensure and regulatory announcements, plus Express Entry draws for healthcare and physicians.
→ The PER guide, a guidelines library, and the full Path to Practice book series.

→ Everything is one tap away.

Your path to practice, in your pocket.

Comment “iOSAPP” for the App Store link in your DM.

Save this for your study desk. Send it to an ITP navigating Canadian licensure.

Ten MCQs every Monday, with every answer explained.
Plus the licensing dates coming up in the weeks ahead.

Preparation can drift between study blocks. Weeks go by without practice questions, and a registration window can close before anyone notices it. Both are avoidable, and neither needs another large resource.

So I built a small one. It is called The Weekly Ten.

It is a free email that lands every Monday. Ten exam-style questions for internationally trained physicians working toward Canadian licensure, the reasoning behind each answer, and the dates worth having on your calendar.

What arrives every Monday:

→ Ten MCQs, written in the style of the exams you are sitting.
→ Every answer explained. Why the correct option is correct, and why the others are not.
→ Five dates ahead. Registration windows, exam sittings, application deadlines.
→ One optional question at signup. Where you are on the journey: fresh graduate, writing the MCCQE or NAC, potential PRA, specialist, or subspecialist.

→ Free. One confirmation click to start, one click to leave.

Ten a week keeps the habit alive.

Comment “WEEKLYTEN” for the signup link in your DM.

Save this for Monday. Send it to an ITP who is preparing.

A two-year fellowship in Toronto that can end with Royal College subspecialty exam eligibility.
Most internationally trained physicians have never heard of SEAP!

Internal medicine specialists trained abroad often assume the Royal College exam door is closed without a Canadian residency in the primary specialty. That is not always true. The Subspecialty Examination Affiliate Program (SEAP) is a fellowship route, and the University of Toronto runs one in Geriatric Medicine.

Here is what this position looks like:

→ Two years at the University of Toronto, mirroring the Geriatric Medicine subspecialty residency, on the Royal College Competence By Design curriculum.
→ Rotations across four academic teaching hospitals: Sunnybrook, Unity Health, Baycrest, and Sinai Health / UHN.
→ Funded. U of T policy requires clinical fellows to be paid at or above the PARO PGY-3 rate. No personal-money arrangements.
→ Before enrollment, the program works with you to confirm eligibility to write the Royal College Geriatric Medicine Subspecialty Exam at the end of training.
→ Pass it, and you can apply to become a Subspecialty Affiliate of the Royal College.
→ One position per year. You apply to the program directly, not through CaRMS.

→ A fellowship that is also an exam pathway. That is what makes SEAP different.

Positions like this exist. Finding them in time is the hard part.

I built the Fellowship Finder to solve exactly that. Canadian fellowship programs for internationally trained physicians, searchable in one place, verified against the programs’ own pages.

Comment “IMGFELLOW” for the Fellowship Finder link in your DM.

Save this for your fellowship search. Send it to an internist who wants a Royal College pathway.