ACLS, PALS etc in Canada vs USA

[Stephtravels]

Hey travellers,

I was just recently told that certain hospitals will not accept my Canadian certifications such as my ACLS and and PALS as they are certified through the Canadian Heart and Stroke Foundation. Is there an actual difference between the content in Canada and the USA? I am going to be very VERY disappointed/ frustrated if my hard work doesn't count for anything south of the 49th parallel.

Any advise/ info is appreciated!

[karma765]

I would email the AHA to see how hard it would be to convert. I am an instructor for them for PALS and BLS. THey have always been helpful when I needed it.

[NedRN]

So what about working at the hospitals that do accept them? When it comes time for renewal, do it in the country you are planning on working.

That said, taking most ACLS renewal classes only take 5-6 hours (but can be hard to find). The AHA now offers the didactic stuff online and I just did that because I was time crunched. Doing the skills assessment at my local fire dept a couple blocks away today. So it can be done relatively fast. But I would not recommend that way for two reasons, it is full price (and twice as much as I have ever paid before: $75 and $200 respectively for online and assessment), and a pain. It took me 10 hours to get through BLS/ACLS because of the endless videos and interactive scenarios. The scenarios were good in one way, they really hammered home the right way to perform the algorithms. But a trivial mistake made early doesn't stop the code, you find out you failed 15 minutes later. One case that turned into asystole 8 minutes into the code would not allow me to terminate until the clock hit 20 minutes. That silliness would never happen in a real class. On the other hand, the objective test was lots easier than in past years in my opinion, and was of course open book if you need to look up something.