Nursing In Calgary

Fiona59 · Jun 28, 2010

I keep hearing this rumour that the freeze will be lifted but haven't heard anything at work. What I do see is new faces in the float pool. I don't know if they've come from other hospitals in the system or what.

Medi centres, Continuing Care (for profit), Home Care agencies are hiring. I don't know about the private surgical suites in Calgary. I do remember hearing that one lost their contract with AHS a couple of months ago.

Calgary can be hard city to get to know people. I lived there in the early '90s. You need to drive because it is so spread out. I know that there are lots of volunteer opportunities, especially once your kids (for some reason I think you had boys) start school.

The best thing I can suggest is if your husband's coworkers invite you over is go. Walk the dog (dog people are usually very friendly and you get to know the area).

Apply on line for anything with AHS that doesn't have an "internal applicants only" tag, even consider giving the float pool managers a call and asking for a chance to have a chat.

So good luck and hope it works out for you.

Pediatric Critical Care Columnist · Jun 28, 2010

There will be new positions opening up... eventually... if both AHS and UNA ratify the mediator's recommendations on Wednesday (June 30/10). Part of the agreement is a letter of understanding between the parties that discusses the "regularization of the workforce". This is jargon for gathering up all the overtime, casual and straight-time extra shifts worked in the province then parcelling out those hours into new positions and add-ons to vacant part-time FTEs. There are two flies in the ointment... another letter of understanding wherein AHS agrees to hire at least 70% of all Alberta BScN graduates in each of the next three years, and the fact that AHS is slower than molasses running up a wall in February at getting things moving. They've been promising the out-of-scope staff information on their job classifications, pay and benefits for nearly a year without anything forthcoming. Dr Duckett's blog indicates that the Management and Out-of-Scope Total Compensation Program details will finally come out next week. So this regularization project will follow a path that looks something like this: They will perform an analysis of all those aforementioned hours. They'll crunch a bunch of numbers to arrive at the number of full time positions that have to be crated to regularize those hours. Then they'll announce that there isn't money to do that right now so they're going to work on doing what they can. They will then have to reanalyze the information because they have a raw number of hours and positions but have no diea where those positions need to be. Then they'll portion out the positions between facilities and units around the province, at least on paper. Then they'll tell HR how many positions they can actually post. Once the postings go up, it will take about another 2 months to actually fill them; they'll have to include new grads in the mix to meet the other terms. So if you're still following me, the process is going to take the life of the contract we're voting on (2010-2013) to actually implement. Having said that, there is a chance that someone like baby girl, with all that critical care experience, might be able to get a foot in the door once the positions are posted. As Fiona59 says, you have to apply for anything and everything and get your foot in the door.