Alberta Health Services (AHS) is currently grappling with significant challenges, including the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic, a growing and aging population, the mental health and opioid crises, healthcare professionals leaving the province, increasing wait times for tests and surgeries, and widespread staff burnout. One solution to addressing these challenges is by employing foreign trained physicians that have immigrated to Alberta, through the federal immigration system. However, self-governing regulatory bodies pose as barriers to having education from outside of Canada accredited. Thus, the goal of this thematic review is to synthetize literature from 2008 to 2023, on the barriers that exist within the credential recognition process and the extent to which these barriers may prevent highly skilled immigrants from entering the labour market, specifically for foreign trained physicians in Alberta. Key word searches in Science Direct, jstor, UCalgary Library, Google Scholar, Stats Canada and social sciences abstracts, identified many peer-reviewed journal articles. However, after a thematic review of the literature, 10 articles emerged which characterized six different themes including jurisdictional challenges, lack of prior knowledge on processes, training entry barriers, discrimination, a small number of residency spots, and ethics of recruiting. The result of this review benefits the future study on the accreditation process for foreign trained physicians and can provide direction on future policy decisions or solutions to the on-going challenges that exist within AHS, and self-governing regulatory bodies.