Earlier this year, as President Donald Trump was beginning to reshape the American government, Michael, an emergency room doctor who was born, raised, and trained in the United States, packed up his family and left the country.
Michael now works in a small-town hospital in Canada. KFF Health News and NPR granted him anonymity because of fears he might face reprisal from the Trump administration if he returns to the U.S. He said he feels some guilt that he did not stay to resist the Trump agenda but is assured in his decision to leave. Too much of America has simply grown too comfortable with violence and cruelty, he said.
"Part of being a physician is being kind to people who are in their weakest place," Michael said. "And I feel like our country is devolving to really step on people who are weak and vulnerable."
Michael is among a new wave of doctors who are leaving the United States to escape the Trump administration. In the months since Trump was reelected and returned to the White House, American doctors have shown skyrocketing interest in becoming licensed in Canada, where dozens more than normal have already been cleared to practice, according to Canadian licensing officials and recruiting businesses.
The Medical Council of Canada said in an email statement that the number of American doctors creating accounts on physiciansapply.ca, which is "typically the first step" to being licensed in Canada, has increased more than 750% over the past seven months compared with the same time period last year — from 71 applicants to 615. Separately, medical licensing organizations in Canada's most populous provinces reported a rise in Americans either applying for or receiving Canadian licenses, with at least some doctors disclosing they were moving specifically because of Trump.
"The doctors that we are talking to are embarrassed to say they're Americans," said John Philpott, CEO of CanAm Physician Recruiting, which recruits doctors into Canada. "They state that right out of the gate: 'I have to leave this country. It is not what it used to be.'"
Canada, which has universal publicly funded health care, has long been an option for U.S.-trained doctors seeking an alternative to the American healthcare system. While it was once more difficult for American doctors to practice in Canada due to discrepancies in medical education standards, Canadian provinces have relaxed some licensing regulations in recent years, and some are expediting licensing for U.S.-trained physicians.
The Trump administration did not provide any comment for this article. When asked to respond to doctors' leaving the U.S. for Canada, White House spokesperson Kush Desai asked whether KFF Health News knew the precise number of doctors and their "citizenship status," then provided no further comment. KFF Health News did not have or provide this information.
Philpott, who founded CanAm Physician Recruiting in the 1990s, said the cross-border movement of American and Canadian doctors has for decades ebbed and flowed in reaction to political and economic fluctuations, but that the pull toward Canada has never been as strong as now.
Philpott said CanAm has seen a 65% increase in American doctors looking for Canadian jobs between January and April, and that the company has been contacted by as many as 15 American doctors a day.
Rohini Patel, a CanAm recruiter and doctor, said some consider pay cuts to move quickly.
"They're ready to move to Canada tomorrow," she said. "They are not concerned about what their income is."
The College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario, which handles licensing in Canada's most populous province, said in a statement that it registered 116 U.S.-trained doctors in the first quarter of 2025 — an increase of at least 50% over the prior two quarters. Ontario also received license applications from about 260 U.S.-trained doctors in the first quarter of this year, the organization said.
British Columbia, another populous province, saw a surge of licensure applications from U.S.-trained doctors after Election Day, according to an email statement from the College of Physicians and Surgeons of British Columbia. The statement also said the organization licensed 28 such doctors in the fiscal year that ended in February — triple the total of the prior year.
Quebec's College of Physicians said applications from U.S.-trained doctors have increased, along with the number of Canadian doctors returning from America to practice within the province, but it did not provide specifics. In a statement, the organization said some applicants were trying to get permitted to practice in Canada "specifically because of the actual presidential administration."
Michael, the physician who moved to Canada this year, said he had long been wary of what he describes as escalating right-wing political rhetoric and unchecked gun violence in the United States, the latter of which he witnessed firsthand during a decade working in American emergency rooms.
Michael said he began considering the move as Trump was running for reelection in 2020. His breaking point came on Jan. 6, 2021, when a violent mob of Trump supporters besieged the U.S. Capitol in an attempt to stop the certification of the election of Joe Biden as president.
"Civil discourse was falling apart," he said. "I had a conversation with my family about how Biden was going to be a one-term president and we were still headed in a direction of being increasingly radicalized toward the right and an acceptance of vigilantism."
It then took about a year for Michael to become licensed in Canada, then longer for him to finalize his job and move, he said. While the licensing process was "not difficult," he said, it did require him to obtain certified documents from his medical school and residency program.
"The process wasn't any harder than getting your first license in the United States, which is also very bureaucratic," Michael said. "The difference is, I think most people practicing in the U.S. have got so much administrative fatigue that they don't want to go through that process again."
Michael said he now receives near-daily emails or texts from American doctors who are seeking advice about moving to Canada.
This desire to leave has also been striking to Hippocratic Adventures, a small business that helps American doctors practice medicine in other countries.
The company was co-founded by Ashwini Bapat, a Yale-educated doctor who moved to Portugal in 2020 in part because she was "terrified that Trump would win again." For years, Hippocratic Adventures catered to physicians with wanderlust, guiding them through the bureaucracy of getting licensed in foreign nations or conducting telemedicine from afar, Bapat said.
But after Trump was reelected, customers were no longer seeking grand travels across the globe, Bapat said. Now they were searching for the nearest emergency exit, she said.
"Previously it had been about adventure," Bapat said. "But the biggest spike that we saw, for sure, hands down, was when Trump won reelection in November. And then Inauguration Day. And basically every single day since then."
At least one Canadian province is actively marketing itself to American doctors.
Doctors Manitoba, which represents physicians in the rural province that struggles with one of Canada's worst doctor shortages, launched a recruiting campaign after the election to capitalize on Trump and the rise of far-right politics in the U.S.
The campaign focuses on Florida and North and South Dakota and advertises "zero political interference in physician patient relationship" as a selling point.
Alison Carleton, a family medicine doctor who moved from Iowa to Manitoba in 2017, said she left to escape the daily grind of America's for-profit health care system and because she was appalled that Trump was elected the first time.
Carleton said she now runs a small-town clinic with low stress, less paperwork, and no fear of burying her patients in medical debt.
She dropped her American citizenship last year.
"People I know have said, 'You left just in time,'" Carleton said. "I tell people, 'I know. When are you going to move?'"
KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF — the independent source for health policy research, polling, and journalism.
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