Long Term Care RN in Canada? (B.C. Preferred)

dayandnight · Sep 17, 2020

There are tons of questions on American Nurses going to Canada. Canada does accept foreign nurses without a Bachelor's degree. You have to take NCAS and take a refresher course depending on the result. You can do RN to BSN but it depends on the similarity of the curriculum for your ASN and RN to BSN. If it's not all that comparable to the Canadian BSN, you might still have to take the NCAS exam. RNs do the same thing as RNs in the US for long term care: family meetings, meds, and you can apply for management positions, etc. There are private facilities that pay less and government facilities which pay more (same wage as hospital workers) and are backed up by a good nursing union and benefits. I don't know about government nursing home patient ratios but in Canada you rotate between 2 shifts (for nursing homes D/E, E/N, D/N etc). Some nursing homes have fixed Nx shift schedules. I worked at a private facility with 1:28 ratio for days, 1:53 ratio for evenings and nights.. but the residents were not as sick as where I used to work in the US (Medicare/Rehab section of the SNF)

Purple_Clover · Sep 19, 2020

On 9/17/2020 at 6:58 PM, dayandnight said:

There are tons of questions on American Nurses going to Canada. Canada does accept foreign nurses without a Bachelor's degree. You have to take NCAS and take a refresher course depending on the result. You can do RN to BSN but it depends on the similarity of the curriculum for your ASN and RN to BSN. If it's not all that comparable to the Canadian BSN, you might still have to take the NCAS exam. RNs do the same thing as RNs in the US for long term care: family meetings, meds, and you can apply for management positions, etc. There are private facilities that pay less and government facilities which pay more (same wage as hospital workers) and are backed up by a good nursing union and benefits. I don't know about government nursing home patient ratios but in Canada you rotate between 2 shifts (for nursing homes D/E, E/N, D/N etc). Some nursing homes have fixed Nx shift schedules. I worked at a private facility with 1:28 ratio for days, 1:53 ratio for evenings and nights.. but the residents were not as sick as where I used to work in the US (Medicare/Rehab section of the SNF)

So it sounds like I could possibly get a job as an RN in long term care in Canada then? Are there enough available positions? I just really like long term care. I was a CNA for 7 years in the setting and it's just comfortable.

Thanks for you reply!

Silverdragon102, BSN · Sep 19, 2020

Suggest looking up LTC facilities in the province you plan on living and working in and seeing what vacancies they have