How did you find a job in Vancouver?

dayandnight · Jan 26, 2017

Do you have a Canadian license???

If you do what is your status? Did you get exempt from SEC before obtaining your license? Because if you take the IEN refresher course you become very hirable (not to mention you gain connections through clinicals and the unit gets to see how you work).

If you have a license and you have a specialty experience you should be able to get responses if you apply to OR in general, but otherwise regular units might be hard because of competition etc. I know there are a lot of shortages in many hospitals but the rate of people getting hired seems to be pretty slow. Try to apply outside of Vancouver and you might see better results.

I'd also call the HR of the health authority you applied if you don't hear anything back in a month or so. My online application had a glitch and was not active and it took over a year for me to call HR and start asking what is going on...; (wish I asked sooner). If you did mention that you did not have PR or citizenship status on your application, it might be a good idea to call too because they are very picky about choosing temporary working visa holders as well.

Pediatric Critical Care Columnist · Jan 26, 2017

If you apply for and are offered a full time acute care, hospital-based position and you accept, you can't simply ask to go down to part time. You'll have to watch and wait for a part time position to be posted, apply on it, perhaps interview for it and be offered it. Hospital employers are bound by a province-wide collective agreement and don't have the ability to change a position's full time equivalent. In fact, the current collective agreement for facilities in BC contains a clause that reads: "The Employer shall eliminate, as far as possible, all part-time employees." In Alberta, an employee may request a decrease in FTE but the employer is not obliged to agree to it.

smr21, BSN · Jan 26, 2017

Thanks for the replies!

Companibiki - I do have a practising license with CRNBC and I have PR status. When I looked up IEN refresher course, I came up with a year long program - is that what you're referring to?

NotReady4PrimeTime - thanks for the info about part time employees, it's different in the States where you can negotiate those things after you've been working for a little while. And wow, eliminating all part-time employees! It's too bad, I really don't want to do two days on, two nights on...working three in a row at my old hospital took it out of me, I can't imagine doing four.

I was also told that as an external applicant, my chances of getting a full time position would be slim, so to apply for casual and part time job openings (which suits me fine) but I wonder if that's the best way to go? Maybe I should start applying for full time work, suck it up and then look at other positions once I have a foot in the door and some seniority. Of course, this all depends on getting a job in the first place...sigh...

dishes, BSN, RN · Jan 26, 2017

If you want to avoid working rotating twelve hour shifts, consider applying to positions that are outside of acute care such as; homecare, rehab, research, doctors offices.

smr21, BSN · Jan 26, 2017

Yes, I've started looking into rehab and other options. The thing is, I really like working in acute care, but the stories I've heard of full time schedules have me pretty scared...maybe I'm just overthinking it and it isn't so bad, I mean if that's the norm then nurses have found ways to make it sustainable, right? I'll keep looking, but it is really helpful to hear other nurse's experiences, so thanks for the thoughts!

dayandnight · Jan 26, 2017

Thanks for the replies!
Companibiki - I do have a practising license with CRNBC and I have PR status. When I looked up IEN refresher course, I came up with a year long program - is that what you're referring to?
.

Yes that is what I mean. If you already have a license but still want to take the course (and I had this as a backup option since I was struggling to get jobs in acute care so I looked into it) you have to pay money to take the SEC/NCAS exam and then based on your skills you might get placed into theory or the actual clinical portion part or combined and the program is up to a year so you might get lucky and only have to take some parts of the program.

Like I said since you do have experience in OR, I would contact Healthmatch BC (you can just google them online) and see what your options are since they specifically help skilled nurses and healthcare professionals to get matched to a job in BC. The other option is just to contact the health authority HR themselves and see how your application processing is going. Good luck!

dishes, BSN, RN · Jan 26, 2017

@companisbiki, NCAS replaced SEC at the beginning of January 2017, IENs cannot just sign up for NCAS as it is a competency assessment that requires a referral from CRNBC. I don't understand why an IEN would ask for a competency assessment after they are already licensed and would be concerned that it may seem like a red flag to the regulatory body.

dayandnight · Jan 27, 2017

Dishes in my case it was the health authority I applied to who told me they recommend that I take a sec and refresher course since I had a gap in working in acute care (I only worked in residential care after I arrived in canada). I told Kwantlan University about this and they were competely fine with it.... it depends on the situation and partly because I could not get hired in acute care when I first arrived and needed to make ends meet by working anywhere I could... people who have a license here can still take refresher course with their license if they have not worked in acute care for a while. I suppose this might or might not apply to the original poster who had yrs of cardiac surgery experience (I do not know how much acute care experience he/she has)

This also happened with my other friend who obtained her license but could not find work and did not work for a year or two after arriving in Canada. She also took the refresher course at Kwantlan, applied herself and now works in the Hospital.

I noticed that in Canada everything is not black and white..and technically as long as you ask the appropriate people and get information, you are free to do what you can to improve your chances of getting a job

dishes, BSN, RN · Jan 27, 2017

Thanks for the explanation companisbiki, in Ontario the competency assessment is the IENCAP which includes the dreaded Objective Structured Clinical Exam (OSCE) and it isn't an assessment that many nurses would willing undergo, just to increase their acute care job prospects.

dayandnight · Jan 28, 2017

Well you can never assume lol I was very tempted to take the sec again since it is required by Kwantlan (and sec does include osce portion ..maybe not 100% same but similar exam format.) I felt discouraged that my license did not mean anything and was about to pay money for the sec when I got contacted by the manager at the semi-rehab transition unit and got hired. Then I tried to get into acute care and the first question they asked me was why I did not take sec and refresher course.. and they were very skeptical and reluctant to take me in. I was very lucky to get hired in acute care. It seems that in BC they expect even the nurses who were licensed before sec came into place to have taken it as if it is almost mandatory..