just4

Thank you for providing an alternative view. I did move from a medical unit to ICU and I found the working conditions much better. Part of the reason is because the ICU manager does an excellent job. However I also found myself frustrated by many things in Quebec such as the refusal to grant me a full license until I passed the French test. I felt I could do better. I moved to another province where my Quebec conditional license was quickly converted to a full, unrestricted license. I also found myself with substantially higher pay with lots of overtime opportunities at double the pay (I was only getting 1.5X in Montreal), much better benefits which include an incredible pension plan, and lower taxes. My current employer also paid for 6 months of specialized full time ICU education where not only were all of my educational expenses paid, but I continued to draw my regular nursing salary while in school. Soon I will be entering a brand new ICU unit with the latest technology and supposedly one of the largest in Canada. I am not saying that everyone wil get all of what I have been able to get in the last couple of years. However my advice to those planning to relocate is to shop around and, before moving to Montreal/Quebec, look and compare other job opportunities. The rest of the country is totally anglophone and many places will appreciate your nursing skills without forcing French on you.

I think you are focusing too much on French and not enough on finding a job. Your best chances are with an English speaking hospital in Montreal such as Montreal General or Jewish Hospital. There are also agencies that can find work for you in nursing homes. Work with the OIIQ to get the necessary permit, which does NOT include French. You have 4 years from the time you get your license transferred as temporary to pass the French exam. Temporary means that you have to renew each year and have taken some French course in good faith to show you are making an effort to learn.

By now you probably should be getting a provisional work license but it probably take until next spring for them to allow you to take the full exam. The French language requirement is nonsense in the sense that you have 4 years to pass those exams, although you have to file a reapplication for your temporary license each year. The other provinces don't give a damn about French and will convert your temporary conditional Quebec license to a full, unconditional license.

I guess I am late to respond but this may help others. In a casual position the employer does not have to pay benefits and gets to try out your competence without committment. Personally I insisted on a full time position when I entered the BC nursing workforce, but I was in a specialized field (ICU with a Bac) so I am more in demand and able to negotiate. I have signed up in other hospitals for casual work because sometimes I want to make some extra money, but obviously I much prefer to work overtime at my hospital since it is paid double. ICU casual work seems to be in high demand and I often turn down work assignments.

I have worked in both places. Stay away from Montreal. Quebec has an enormous public debt and no money for health or anything else. There is corruption at every level of government (see the Mafia investigations and resignation of the mayors of Montreal and Laval). Taxes are the highest in Canada.

I would say that working a hospital in Montreal is challenging and will get worse both because there is an enormous budget deficit and because there is governmental corruption at all levels. The only place you might find relieve is if you transfer to a specialty unit such as ER or ICU where the nurse to patient ratio is much better but you end up doing CNA tasks yourself. I did som part time through agencies in nursing homes but the working conditions are no better, one nurse is responsible for a lot of residents. There is plenty of greener grass in other pastures so you really need to assess whether it is really worth it to sacrifice yourself for someone that is just a boyfriend.

PQ is Province of Quebec (sometimes QC). Don't confuse BA with BS. As with EE, you need to work towards a BS, specifically nursing. Forget about anything less, it would make you second class for the rest of your career. All provinces are moving towards a BSN requirement for nurses. Also, if your partner is going to get a PhD, you should at least get a full college degree as well. Get your base courses at a community college in the US and then get into an accelerated university nursing program in the US. McGill is overrated and has some requirements such a physics that are really not relevant to nursing. Take the USA NCLEX and get registered in a state, then move to Montreal, keeping in mind that the city and province are now in chaos due to student riots and nothing will be getting better for years. You will need to take a Quebec nursing test which will take two days instead of 2 hours, but which is actually easier than NCLEX. You will never be a "full" nurse in Quebec unless you get fluent in French, but you can take your limited license from Quebec and convert it to another Canadian provincial license if you got your degree in the USA . If you were to get a degree from McGill it would be more difficult to get another provincial license without passing a Canadian test (yes, it sounds incredible but true). Most likely you and your partner will discover the disadvantages of living in Quebec (high taxes, high cost of living, low wages, crumbling infrastructure) and opt for another province or another state in which to live.

Here is a current article which supports my experience of finding the cost of living in Montreal high. Quebec Could Soon Be Poorest Province

Realistically, I have not found Quebec cheap at all living there the last 2.5 years. I guess it all depends on the specific expenditures that you want to focus on. Take the yearly nursing license fees for instance. I think that they are about 175$ a year in Ontario, compared to 330$ in Quebec. You may find this article interesting Nurses fume over 23% hike in professional dues While newnurse2bjoan is probably right about cheaper child care, the mothers I have met found it incredibly difficult to find a public child care provider at the reduced rates. It's sort of like trying to find a family doctor when 2.5 million of the people in Quebec are desperately searching with you, and the province has not even set up a computerized waiting list so that those who have been looking for years have a chance...

Amy, I think you will find that the pay is lower in Quebec and the provincial income tax is quite a bit higher. You will be able to get a temporary Quebec nursing license based on your Ontario license. It will remain temporary for up to 4 years until you pass the French exam. The exam is composed of 4 parts (oral and written comprehension) and must be taken at least once a year to renew the yearly license. Many colleges (CEGEPs) offer courses especially for nurses to focus on the French technical terms. Here are the requirements for the French language Vivre en français - Membres des ordres professionnels - Table des matières Good luck, personally I found it all to be utter nonsense and left the province.

My own experience last year was not at all bad. I needed to move from Montreal to BC, but I opted to look for a job in Surrey which is only about 25 Km south of Vancouver. Vancouver is easily reached by Skytrain. I had a couple of years of hospital experience with the last 9 months in ICU. Anyway, I applied for my license in August and it took over a month for the OIIQ (Quebec nursing board) to send the BC board confirmation of my Quebec license. It only took a week for the BC board to issue a BC license once they received the Quebec documentation. You can pay for a 6 month license if you are unsure of your future prospects. I then started talking to recruiters for one of the major hospital organizations. I made it clear that I wanted a full time position, not a casual one. Of course I had very good grades from my university and very positive references from my Montreal manager. Within a month I was offered a full time ICU position in a local hospital with a base salary increase of about 20%. I don't really agree with those that claim that this area is much more costly. I am paying about the same rent as I was paying in Montreal but I have a much larger, newer, and nicer apartment. Food (particularly fruits and vegetables) is cheaper because much is locally grown. Also, there is plenty of opportunity to shop in Washington State where prices are even lower, and border guards are much more easy going than in Quebec. The only expensive item is car insurance if you have a vehicle. That by far is compensated by lots of overtime opportunity at double pay, while I was only getting time and a half in Quebec. The weather is a lot warmer, the scenery is beautiful, and the people are friendly. So, if you can get by for a while without a job, I would definitely say you should take a chance!

I have found that Amazon.com (USA) is much faster that the Canadian one, possibly because USA mail is generally faster as well. However, you should also look into Amazon UK.

In the USA you should be working towards a Bachelor of SCIENCE in Nursing, not another BA! I did and the OIIQ had no problem certifying my degree (it took 6 months and lots of paperwork). The Quebec exam is only once a year, so it could take you up to a year before you get fully licensed to practice. Even then you will get a provisional license valid for only one year. Within that year you will have to take a French course and pass a French competency exam. As already mentioned, you can repeat the process every year for up to 4 years. Note that the yearly nursing cost for a license in Canada is about 10 times higher than in the states.

Some of the information above is not accurate. I say this as an RN with a BSN in the USA and current license in one USA state and two diverse Canadian provinces. In some US states and some Canadian provinces (Quebec for example) you can get an RN license with just an associate degree. That is changing, most places and employers want a Bachelor now. Regardless, of the degree, in all cases there is a requirement that the state or provincial nursing regulating body assess your course of studies to see if it is relevant and current. I had no problems getting Quebec to validate my USA university studies. However, once that is done, you still have to pass the competency exam. For all USA states it is the NCLEX, for most Canadian provinces and territories it is the CRNE, except Quebec which has it's own unique two-day test.

My citizenship is not Canadian and the country in which I was educated is neither Canada nor the country of my birth. I have had a "limited" Quebec license for a couple of years because I have not pushed myself to learn French. I applied to the CRNBC for a license. It took a month for Quebec OIIQ to confirm I hold a Quebec license and even then it took an angry request to have it faxed (they make nurses pay almost 50$ for that "service"). Anyway, 3 days later CRNBC granted me a FULL license. This is one of the many reasons to move west...

That was not my experience. I am a male and a couple of years ago I graduated at the top of my class of about 48 (also about 10% male).

You need to ask yourself whether you are doing it for your kids or for yourself due to midlife crisis. Somehow you all have been managing so far, and in 6 more years your youngest will be out of the nest, so unless you stop working and rush through to get your education, your kids won't get any benefits. In a way you are leaving them on their own at a time when they need you most, their teen years, since you are a single parent. If I were you I wold just take one class per semester and see how it goes. Consider carefully delaying your dream until both children have reached 18. I write this as one of my colleagues has her son in intensive care with police posted outside his room. Last year the son of another colleague was killed by what appears to be gang violence. The regular nursing hours are taxing enough on a single parent family, and if you add classes and homework, the outcome is not always positive.

I also feel that males are favored a bit more. I don't deny that I am competent and nurses are in high demand, but I have always been given an offer for every job for which I have applied. I also think doctors are a bit less hard on male nurses. I don't believe my female colleagues have a target on my back. We work as a team and it's all about competency and attitude. That said, I would not be looking for an inside edge based on your gender. Be all that you can be, and in today's world I would set my ultimate goal to at least a BSN even if you need to pause for an ADN initially.

I work in a major hospital. We only have RNs and CNAs. However I have also worked in a nursing home where they have RNs, LPNs and CNAs.

Unfortnately it is even worse than I describe. I limited myself to the hospital environment. However, in my province 2 million people have no family doctor because there are not enough of them. Patients can try to go to clinics or ER rooms if they have symptoms but they are not getting proactive screenings for critical conditions. The family doctors are underpaid and overhwhelmed. Many of them work into their eighties and nurses are getting $8K bonuses to delay their retirement. I am guessing that if you were to insist to one of these old time family doctor that someone else be present during and exam you would probably end up as one of the 2 million, without any doctor. Of course there is not even a sign up or a waiting list to get assigned to any available doctor. Such a list would force the government to admit there is a problem...Recently there was a raffle to raise money for some charity. The big prize was one assignment to one family doctor.

I'm not making excuses, I am stating facts. In an ideal world all health care would be free and there would be enough staff to cater to all of the patients' physical and emotional needs. Every hospital would have the latest machines, an unlimited supply of blood and transplant organs, and all patients could receive the latest drugs, no matter what the cost. The reality is that no country offers that and everywhere the world governments are in debt and are cutting back on health spending. Conditions are worsened by a large increase in the aging population without a comparable increase in health services available. It's not a question of giving up, but what can any single nurse do? Think of it as triage in an emergency situation. We deal with the most critical physical symptoms first. Most of our hospitals are operating at beyond capacity. Patients spend days in ER because there are no beds available on the units. Once a patients is discharged another one is admitted almost immediately. Say one woman patient feels that sharing a room with 3 male patients is insulting her dignity. Should my hospital deny a bed to the 3 males patients? Personally I often forego breaks because there is not enough time to chart, administer medications, take vital signs, and so forth, and many of my male and female colleagues do the same. I imagine that is the reality of most trauma centers.

Where I work there is no staff available to cater to modesty. I insert and remove urinary catheters all day on men and women. My colleagues are equally busy and we have no time to drag each other around just to stand and watch based on gender preferences. Perhaps it is because I work in a country with socialized medicine, but we have 4 patients in one room and gender is not even considered in assigning patients to a room.

MGH operates in English. That does not mean that occasionally you will not run into patients or their family who will try to get you to speak French. I have never quite figured out why they chose an English speaking hospital in the first place. On the other hand, you can just as easily get patients from the far north who don't speak either English or French, or someone from some distant country. You work around that, but in OR you would not have that much contact. By Quebec law, establishments have to approach you in French. Stand your ground, respond in English. They want your money and your business, and they quickly become bilingual.

If you are looking for English colleges you can go to Varnier or Dawson or John Abbot (colleges are called CEGEP here). You can also easily Google CEGEP for French speaking ones. Most have the winter break schedules posted. You will have to apply for the equivalent of a student visa and, as has been said and bears repeating, you will pay big bucks whereas you cold get a similar inexpensive education in a US community college. Personally I would advise against your plan and I say this having attended a US community college, a US university, then passed the NCLEX and then the Quebec OIIQ test, both within the last couple of years. The Quebec CEGEPs require 3 years of attendance. You could do two years at a US community college and then enter a US accelerated university BSN program for 18 months which would make you eligible for higher pay in either country for only an extra 6 months of study. I found the NCLEX multiple choice test challenging even though it only lasted 2 hours and I passed it the first time. The Quebec equivalent lasts two days (one day of hands on clinical and one day of short answer questions). However I found it substaintially easier and also passed it on the first try. A significant number of my colleagues educated here fail it though, and it appears to me that they have not been taught the depth of knowledge that I have learned in the USA. It surprises me, considering that here the colleges tend to dedicate a one semester class to teaching students how to succeed in taking the test. There were no such classes in the USA for NCLEX unless you want to enroll for a private tutoring service. Basically I went from difficult to easy, but if you were to get your degree here, you would have to go back to the states to pass the NCLEX, whichi is the hard part. Why not just work here, you may ask? Well, that opens an immigration can of worms. Americans cannot just immigrate to Canada/Quebec. You have to go through a lengthy process that can take a couple of years and lots of paperwork. Only people in specific labor shortage categories (such as nursing) get qualified, but I don't know if you qualify without a BSN. Plenty of doctors from other countries qualify to come here and Americans get no particular immigration priority except that the English documents do not need to be translated. Also be warned that this is NOT France. Most of the people may speak a version of French (some of which you will not understand when it is spoken) but attitudes are much different. Despite official pretense of brotherhood, the French and Quebecers frequently criticize each other at an individual level. A French friend of mine came last year and could not put up with the people here. She moved to Toronto. Sarkosy last year said "Quebecers are our brothers, but Canadians are our friends." You can put any spin you want on that, but to me it refers that we don't get to choose our brothers and have to put up with them, but we do get to choose our friends. A couple of more points on the finances should be pointed out. The Quebec nursing exam costs twice has much as the NCLEX (those actors pretending to have illnesses need to be paid) and the yearly license fee is 10 times as much in Quebec as in the US state where I am also licensed.

gender discrimination is illegal, period. it does not matter whether the person being discriminated against is male or female. the fact that your workplace selectively discriminates only against male nurses and not male doctors makes it worse. contact the equal employment opportunity commission (eeoc) to file a workplace discrimination charge with the state or federal agency. most claims begin at the state level, with the exception of those filed by federal workers. these claims are investigated by both state and federal officials.