For those considering Canada, read on...

There is a difference between signing a contract with a recruiter and receiving an offer of employment from a specific workplace. Until a unit or clinic has completed all the stages for employing a person and have sent out the actual letter offering employment, the process can be terminated. The letter would read something like this:

"Jane Doe, RN shall be employed as a staff RN on Unit XYZ with an FTE of 80%. Hourly wages will be in accordance with the United Nurses of Alberta Collective Agreement with credit given for all documented relevant experience. A letter of portability from each employer detailing this experience will be required prior to this credit being initiated. A probationary period of 540 hours will be required prior to permanent employment.

A relocation allowance in the amount of $X,000 will be provided upon the successful completion of orientation and upon the presentation of supporting original receipts.

Employment will commence on June 1, 2009 at 0730 hours. Please report to Rm 201, 3rd Floor, Anytown Hospital at that time for preliminary orientation. You will be required to offer proof of BCLS certification and licensure with CARNA at this time. Blah blah blah banking information, yadda yadda yadda immigration documents...."

Those 1000+ nurses in the Philippines are not likely in possession of that type of documentation, only a piece of paper signed by a recruiter, which likely has a lot of fine print outlining the terms under which the agreement may be voided. The statement from Dr. Duckett indicates that there will be a much closer look at who is being recruited externally and limits placed on that process, which would be covered in the conditions for voiding any such agreement.

There's been lots happening in Alberta since my previous post. There currently are NO postings for nurses anywhere in Alberta. The Minister of Health, Ron Liepert, and the CEO of Alberta Health Services Stephen Duckett have both said publicly that there is NO NURSING SHORTAGE in Alberta, only a shortage of nurses who want to work full time. http://www.edmontonjournal.com/Healt...262/story.html Many of the nursing administration personnel have been forced to reapply for their jobs and a good number of them had their jobs eliminaed so they're now looking to bump someone below them. Nobody knows for sure what's happening anywhere only that everyone is feeling threatened in one way or another. In my case, I'm afraid that the former director of my program will now become my immediate manager. I don't know that I could stay in my job if that happens because I don't trust this person and I know things on our unit will get much worse than they are now because this person has no understanding of what we do or how we do it. Not that our current immediate manager is all that wonderful, but better the devil one knows... The IENs already here are being exploited by the AHS and many of them may find themselves on a flight back home without really understanding why. It's not a nice place to be right now.

Before I went to bed last night I took a quick look at the job postings for the former Capital Health region. There are a handful up, all of them having been determined to be "essential to fill". But EVERY SINGLE ONE said that the posting was only open to CURRENT AHS employees, which means they're only shuffling the problem around. The Employer (the province of Alberta) insisted that the contract be amended to state that employees could only hold a single position within the region which is now the whole province (so if I had a 0.4 with the University, I couldn't then also have a 0.4 at the Alex even though it would still be less than full time). So how do they think that taking a nurse from Point A and employing them at Point B will solve the shortage? There's obviously some health care economics formula that I'm unaware of that makes that work...