Any Aussie nurses ever worked in Canada?

Norstar · Jan 13, 2008

Hi Kylie,

I'm an aussie who has been living in Canada but came back to finish my nursing degree in Australia. I'm in my last year and due to go back in a few months.

The Canadian system requires you to have a 4 year nursing degree or equivalent before you can apply to sit the national exam. If you only have the usual 3 year degree from Australia you may have to complete extra study when you get to Canada, bearing in mind unless you are a canadian resident or citizen you will be a full fee paying international student. From what I hear our degrees are deficient in obs, mental health and paeds. The board of registration in the province I live in has advised that this normally takes about 8 months to complete. Once completed you can then apply to sit the national exam. If you pass you are then eligable for registration. You get 3 shots at the exam, which I believe is not an easy one.

I live in Ontario and although there is a lot of nursing work available most of the positions are only permanent part time .... and they wonder why all the nurses go south to the US!!

Anyway hope that helps. Its a long process if you want to nurse in Canada but if you're keen enough you'll get there.

Good luck with it!!

Vanessa

elmar22 · Jan 13, 2008

If you only have the usual 3 year degree from Australia you may have to complete extra study when you get to Canada, bearing in mind unless you are a canadian resident or citizen you will be a full fee paying international student. From what I hear our degrees are deficient in obs, mental health and paeds. The board of registration in the province I live in has advised that this normally takes about 8 months to complete.

This is because Canadian/US Nursing graduates are generalists (they are required to have minimum number of hours of theory/clinical in paedia, ob-gyne, OR, etc while Australian graduates are specialists -they concentrate on an area of specialisation (e.g. OR) at the end of their Nursing year, giving them a lot of number of hours in their specialisation but with minimum no. of hours of theory/clinical in other areas. Unfortunately the Australian minimum hours/clinical in those other areas is lesss than the required in US/Canada. This discrepancy in Nursing education makes Aussie nurses having the need to complete those required number of hours to be able to take any Canadian/US licensure exams.

AussieKylie · Jan 14, 2008

Yeh, and that is where my problem is of having to do two courses to meet their standards OBS & PAEDS.

I am questioning whether to go ahead with the courses as right now since I arrived in Canada September 1 and working in Calgary, a certain staff member has pressured me to go ahead with IEN assessment and now to compete courses. I aint happy about that and honestly just wanna return to Oz and work my life as a nurse back home.

To do these courses especially when the assignment about critiquing a nursing article is having me grit my teeth and anxiety levels grow high. THat area in Uni was terrible experience as I just managed to scrape by with just a PASS.