Australian Nurse moving to Alberta

[tamaralee88]

G'day from the land down under :-)

I am an Australian registered nurse/midwife wanting to move to Alberta in August 2014. CARNA currently is waiting on my university transcripts but does have all documentation including my information in Australia from my Nursing regulatory body. I am concerned about the process as I have read lots of discouraging stories, I understand nursing courses are different country to country but has anyone or know of anyone that has come from Australia to Alberta and possibly what the next step in my application with CARNA might be once they have my transcripts? I'd also like to know what my job opportunities might be?

Any advice or information would be wonderful and maybe add some piece of mind.

Thank you

Tamara

[itsmejuli]

There are plenty of threads in this forum discussing the poor nursing job prospects here in the big cities of Alberta.

Did you try searching this forum for Australian nurses?

[Fiona59]

My first thought was WHY!!!. Our weather seriously sucks.

There used to be an Australian poster down in Calgary, a few years back. She seemed to be locked in an eternal battle with CARNA and wasn't happy with any responses she got.

[NotReady4PrimeTime, RN]

I've worked with several nurses from both Australia and New Zealand. Generally speaking they've had some issues with insufficient didactic and clinical education in pediatrics, obstetrics and mental health nursing when CANRA assessed their education.

As the two previous posters have indicated, the bigger problem will be to find a job. Getting registered and moved may prove to be the easy part. In the time that you're only here on a work permit, you will have to have full time employment to maintain it. Unless you have a long list of highly-specialized skills you'll be competing against hundreds of locally educated nurses. It's pretty bad here right now.