Canadian Dream.

[Boots RN]

Hi Guys. just here to ask some opinions, insights or maybe some tips. I am a Reg.

Nurse here in the Philippines. Probably by 2013 i would be a Staff nurse in one of the prestigious hospital here. and maybe after having at least 2 years experience, i would push my luck for my Canadian dream. now i have a lot of questions for those pinoy IENS here or maybe to anyone who's very knowledgeable.

1. which Canadian province/state would be best(generally) for a pinoy IENS? currently i would love to live in Toronto.

2 from what i've read and heard alot of IENS wasn't permitted to take CRNE without taking a bridging course. how long would it take for an IEN to finnish a bridging course if he/she would pursue LPN first?

3. I have a Godmother living in Surrey BC with her family for more than 5 or 6 years. would she be able to help me in anyway? like as a sponsor or anything?

[Fiona59]

McLovin, would you have accepted a no from an Indo-Canadian, Carib-Canadian? The truth is Vancouver and the entire lower mainland is saturated with nurses. Of course they will hire locally educated nurses first because often the government/taxpayer funded their education.

When my family moved to BC in the '60s, my mother was a nurse in the UK, my father a master journeyman in his trade. My father went to the bottom of the union hiring board and took six months of working a day here and there to finding the job he retired from. My mother's qualification were never recognized. She never returned to nursing because quite simply they had no childcare for two children and my father couldn't afford to pay for the education she needed.

Yes, there are underemployed professionals of all types in this country. But there are limited spots in the residency programmes for doctors, dentists, and veterinarians. Many I've worked with had such poor English that the patients have needed the nurses to act as translators. Hardly the best method of care.

I work with LPNs who have Masters degrees in their homelands that simply couldn't afford the re-education in their professions.

Non, regret the move and the struggle. But they also didn't expect to walk into the job of their choice and into a position of respect.

As a single person you had the option that many families didn't or don't have. You could have moved anywhere. You chose to take your chances in the lowermainland one of the most expensive, hard to find employment cities in the nation. I remember when you started posting here and like many of your fellow posters you simply chose not believe what nurses here in Canada were telling you. That it was going to be very difficult and not the golden opportunity that posters from the Phillipines were telling us when they were telling us they were "the best nurses in the world" and were coming to Canada "to save nursing and show us how to do it"..

[Ginger's Mom, MSN, RN]

McLovin, sounds like you were moving to advance your career rather then become a Canadian. I believe if you spent your energies embracing the culture your career success would have followed. Thank you for honest report.