Hi, I'm a nurse in England and would like some information about nursing in Canada. My husband will be moving in there shortly and it is my intention to follow soon after. I am trying to establish whether you have District Nursing out there, the terminology is a little different. Could anyone advise me? Many thanks, Di

What is district nursing? Is it like public health? If you told us exactly what you do, I may be able to help. What part of Canada are you moving to?

I've worked with RN's who went out and did home visits, dressing changes, med adjustments, that kind of thing. But it was a position within a Geriatric Programme.

Perhaps, its more a homecare type position, or even palliative?

What is district nursing? Is it like public health? If you told us exactly what you do, I may be able to help. What part of Canada are you moving to?

District nursing is providing care in the home, mostly it's elderly people, but not always. The role is quite diverse, leg ulcers, palliative care, PICC line flushes, chest drains, venepuncture etc. Our remit is to the housebound. We are usually based in a Doctors surgery and work with the doctors caseload. We don't do personal hygiene and cooking etc.

It will be Toronto where we are moving to, although I don't know what district at the moment. Thanks!!

I've worked with RN's who went out and did home visits, dressing changes, med adjustments, that kind of thing. But it was a position within a Geriatric Programme.

Perhaps, its more a homecare type position, or even palliative?

Thanks, that is exactly the kind of thing. So is a geriatric programme a hospital based thing? Are there many jobs in this field? Over here we are autonomous practitioners, although we work in a multidisciplinary way, liasing with community chiropodists, physiotherapists, agency nurses etc. Thanks!!

We call that home care or visiting nurses. I'm sure you'll be able to find work doing that in the Toronto area. A friend of mine did that for years out in North York. Have you looked at registering? http://www.cno.org is the site for the college of nurses of Ontario and you can't work as a nurse until you register with them.

You might want to look at this:

http://www.prefhealthcare.com/about.htm

or this

http://www.saintelizabeth.com/employment/jobfair.html#Toronto

Thank you, that is very kind of you. I will look at the web sites in a minute, I'm sure that any information I manage to get will be useful. Quite interesting that you mentioned North York, that is one of the places my husband has talked about. Although I am a RN, at present I am undertaking a BSc in Community Health Care Nursing. In March/April I have the opportunity to take up an elective placement. Obviously it would prove beneficial to spend the time out there,where I would be able to gain valuable experience. If you think of anywhere I could approach, then I would be truly grateful. I have already contacted the cno, just awaiting the response. Many thanks for your help, I do appreciate it!!

Glad to be of help:)

I think you'd have to go through a nursing school program to arrange such a placement. I know the university of toronto has a nursing program, but I don't know the other schools in the area. You'd still need to work things out with CNO because I think even students have to have some sort of registration with them, but I'm not sure about that (I did my training in BC). Those companies may be able to advise you if you let them know you are interested in working for them when you're finished your training. If I was moving back to Toronto, I'd probably live in North York. There are some really nice neighbourhoods there and it's very accessible to downtown via the younge subway line.

There are agencies out there that provide community nursing via contracts with the Community Care and Access Centres (CCAC).Each area in Ontario has one of these and each area has a contract with a nursing agency ) sometimes more than one) North York is a nice area, I agree with Fergus. Good luck.

I came over to Mississauga three months ago, back in the uk I was a school nusre with the community degree. From my experience it would be best to start the process of registering with the cno as soon as possible, it it quite a lenghty process. I waited to take the exam until I arrived over here, I found that employers are unlikely to hire you without the exam on tempoary registration. Try and get some of the study guides that the cno suggest for studying, they were off great help, I ordered them off Amazon.

I passed the exam first time, but there is a lenghty time in between sitting and waiting for the results. Looking back I if I realised this I would have flown over to sit the exam before I came over. Hope that this is off use to you, let me know if I can be off any further help. Good luck.