Ok this one is very specific......

spiritmagejkt · Dec 15, 2007

I can tell you what my experience is and was. I'm not in British Columbia. When I found out I was going to Canada I first looked to see what the procedure was to have a nursing license here. Most of the info was on the website for the licensing body which is called the College of Regestered nurses. I found that in Nova Scotia everyone coming into the country has to sit Nursing board exams.

I then had a whole mess of paperwork which had to be sent which included copies of my transcripts from school. ( I have a BSN) a letter of recommendation from work and stuff from each liscensing board I held a licesense with. Mail took forever. I finally got annoyed enough and started using Fex Ex to ship everything here.

I then found out ( after I got here and had a job offer) that the distribution of my clinical hours in my education ( 20 years ago) was not the same and didn't meet certain criteria here. Basically my clinical education was in a number of different areas which included the big ones Medsurg, peds obgyn ect, but also public health, ltc, and nursing managment. Nova Scotia's eduction is ONLY in the major areas covered in the boards so the hours are higher in those areas.

Because of this I did not qualify to sit the exam. 4 months have now passed. I'm in Nova Scotia at this point. I've been studying this whole time.

I'm referred to a program called Bridge to Canadian nursing and find out I get to take the supertest. Its oral its written its clinical, its every college final plus nursing boards and Glory be!!! its mostly Public Health yes I've landed in heaven my specialty Finally gets the recognition it deserves. Most of the test takes a Public Health angle. I'm in my element as I'm slogging my way through 8 hour exams for a whole week. Well a grant covered this so I haven't had to pay anything for it.

Results so far, 4 months of studying 8 years experience in public health 3 in school health saved me from having to go back to school..... I hope. I aced the exam, I am now praying and hoping that the college agrees with their assessment and lets me go on to take another grueling board exam. Time for the Cattle drive..... I hope. Either that or its Delhousie University to jump through more hoops.

The good thing? So far I've been treated very professionally and politely. Communication has been clear. The people that did the testing were a joy to work with. Choosing my place of work is no longer tied to how good their health insurance is and when I do go to work the pay is generally better than I was making in the states. Public health is a big componant here so instead of being a backwater afterthought specialty that pays barely above minimum wage, I can seriously think about going back and actually making a decent living with it.

Thats my story I'm sticking to it!!

Rage, RN · Dec 15, 2007

Thank you for your information, from what I understand the providences have their own aspects of nursing requirements and for testing just like the states do. Which is the reason I mentioned British Columbia in the beginning. I have already gone to the CRNBC website to determine their requirements and I seem to have the largest percentage of it.

But of course that in itself doesn't answer my questions either.

Again thank you for your background story, but I'm not sure where it applies to the question I asked.

spiritmagejkt · Dec 21, 2007

This particular program is done in Alberta and Nova Scotia that I know of. The resource sites used by BC though are the same as I was given.

My point is to watch out and allow for curve balls in the process. Expect and plan for them. Yes its a different Provence but they sure are set up like Nova Scotia.

I do know that theyre trying to bring other provences on board with this thing as well. Doing the assessement beats having to go back to school. From what I can tell on the website its a similar set up. BC uses a different college . It should say how many hours you need clinical wise. ( this is in your basic education) There were major differences here between how the countries do their nursing education. It was something like 10-15 credit hours areas in each of the major areas covered on the nursing tests ( medsurg, peds, obgyn and psych) and mine was 5-8 credit hours. But the other clinical hours were in other specialties. NS required 1500-2000 hours total in these areas. Im guessing based on what my school sent me its about 100 hours per credit hour of the class. This is Indiana University. Ask what the nursing schools around there arrange their classes and if there is a major discrepency prepare for a curve ball.

So much for what you can't control

I would

Start studying for boards. They have a different angle to their nursing here find out what the differences are. NS has a strong public health emphasis and BC is giving the same web information as far as their tests are concerned. They have a study book which I strongly recommend you look at. If you have to take an assessment this prep time will help.

There are a couple things you can do to make the process more efficient. Find out if you need a police certificate to immigrate and get right on that because the FBI takes their own sweet time about it. Also check into the physical. That part didn't take long but it was expensive. It looks like your nursing board requires it. It takes forever if you need an FBI cert. I'm seriously thinking about getting the state ones as well just so I have them in hand if they ask. It doesnt cost anything to get fingerprints here.

Rage, RN · Dec 21, 2007

Thank you for the information. It was that level of specifity that I was looking for. The college I attend requires a physical and a background check via the FBI before you can even attend the nursing program.

I'm not sure about the amount of hours our clinicals equate to but I do know most school have 2 med-surg classes and we have a med-surg and a critical care. It is the critical care area that I want to go into.

I'll check with the schools here and see what they require for graduation to determine where my schooling falls regarding requirements.

It's interesting that there are so many differences in requirement for nurses with licenses, when both countries practise the same medicine......... oh well sie la vie

Pediatric Critical Care Columnist · Dec 21, 2007

They have a different angle to their nursing here find out what the differences are. NS has a strong public health emphasis and BC is giving the same web information as far as their tests are concerned. They have a study book which I strongly recommend you look at. If you have to take an assessment this prep time will help.

We actually don't have a different angle on nursing here at all. Our nursing care is the same as nursing care anywhere. It's only the focus of our examination that is different. At the risk of being turned into a flaming ball of gaseous matter by the Canadian Nurses' Association, I'll say that the slant of the CRNE came out of the decision years ago to require a degree for entry to practice. For some reason, the pointed heads of academe seem to think that degree-prepared nurses don't really need any clinical preparation or clinical knowledge base, because they're all going to be administrators and public health case managers. So they need to have good therapeutic communication skills, psychosocial assessment skills and an understanding of the social safety net and its component agencies, but they don't really need to know that the combination of a benzodiazepine and baclofen can cause psychosis... or that if you put saline in the balloon on a foley, it might well crystalize and then you'll never get it to deflate... And this trickles down to education. Many of the new grads here have never done a large portion of the skills we all use day-to-day; they might have done it once in the lab on a dummy but never on a real person. One girl I know had been working as a nurse for more than a year before she removed a foley for the first time. From what I hear from students currently training, the clinical aspect is getting even less attention and some aren't even touching a peds patient before graduation. I don't know where it all is going. I just know it's not the best case scenario.

Spritz · Dec 23, 2007

but they don't really need to know that the combination of a benzodiazepine and baclofen can cause psychosis... or that if you put saline in the balloon on a foley, it might well crystalize and then you'll never get it to deflate...

while i am a student practical nurse and don't know the complete chemical pharmacology of the benzo/baclofen interaction (although am familiar with those drugs being a pharm tec for 3+ years), i would like to comment on the catheter statement. i consulted with my instructor on this as it did not sound accurate to me, (instructor has her r.n.,b.n. & g.n.c.©) and her reply is

"i can truly state that normal saline is isotonic to our bodies and, contrary to the claim that you understand, gets absorbed into the body such that individuals with long term indwelling catheters need to have their catheter balloons re inflated every week- it's on their care plans!! "

as a budding professional, i am quickly learning that what one person believes or attains to, may not be the standard of practice and ethics that i must abide by. i will continue to question things that don't sound or sit right.

wishing you all the very best of the holiday season, i remain yours truly (and questioning)

teresa

Pediatric Critical Care Columnist · Dec 23, 2007

Perhaps your instructor with all her credentials truly believes that saline is absorbed through the balloons of foleys into the bladder. However, I have, in my more than 13 years of bedside nursing practice had a number of balloons on both foley catheters and gastrostomy tubes become clogged with crystalized salt from being inflated with saline. I would expect that if anything diffused across the balloon into the bladder it would be the water portion, since the concentration of sodium in urine is much higher than 0.9% The commercially available catheterization trays contain a prefilled syringe of sterile water for instilling into the balloon, not a syringe prefilled with saline.

Foley catheters are often used during hysterosalpingography examinations for the purpose of delivering contrast. Among the list of complications with hysterosal- pingography, however, the problem of a non-deflating Foley catheter balloon is rarely described. Potential factors predisposing to nondeflating balloons include

faulty catheter balloon valves and the use of inflating fluids, such as saline that may crystallize and allow debris to block the balloon channel.

http://www.hkcr.org/publ/Journal/vol4no2/full/164-165.pdf

Each part of the Foley catheter can be implicated as a potential cause of the balloon not deflating. The inflation valve can malfunction, thereby preventing return of the fluid filling the balloon. External clamping, crushing, or kinking can damage the inflation channel, or it can become obstructed by solute crystallization when fluids other than sterile water are utilized for balloon inflation.

http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/405769_4

Before inserting the catheter, ensure that the balloon inflates and deflates easily. Use only water - not normal saline - to inflate the balloon as normal saline can precipitate, making the balloon difficult to deflate when the patient is ready for catheter removal.

http://emprocedures.com/urinary_cath/procedure.htm

As you can see, I'm not the only one to have observed this. I found many more references but thought three would be enough.

Spritz · Dec 23, 2007

Thank you for your response and further explanations. I value what other professionals have to offer. I guess I will have to keep this in mind and should the situation arise with being unable to deflate, fall back on what you have explained with your experience.

Thank you again. :) :)