Hardworking Nurse

By the way before I forget, please do not try to obtain your RN or LPN license in other provinces like BC, AB, or QC. Chances are, you will redo everything again once you want to settle in Ontario. I think (though I am still searching this on the internet), other provinces recognize Ontario RN or RPN but not the other way around. I know I have read it somewhere but you can help me out here. For starter here is the link from CNO about registration policy http://www.cno.org/reg/index.htm.

Hi there, Our experience here in Toronto is this. We're six nurses, some male some female nurses who migrated to Canada. Most of us initially work in numerous sweatshops just to get by, just to make both ends meet. But we were able to pursue nursing, canadian education wise. I mean we are licensed in our respective countries of origin and have relevant number of years of experience. We had made a research and followed the steps as provided for by CNO (College of Nurses of Ontario), RNAO (Registered Nurses Association of Ontario). We had to spend our own money. Some were even rejected to obtain a student loan (OSAP) because what I heard is, the loan is ONLY for college diploma or university education or post graduate education such as MBA. Futhermore, the system really made it difficult for the recently landed immigrants to get RN or RPN jobs. CNO will make you complete all the requirements (you have to spend substantial money and time like about 3 years). However most facilities and hospitals do not care about that because they want somebody who underwent clinicals in ontario and they want education obtained in canada or in particular in any one of those colleges or universities in ontario. Forget about your over 5 or 10 years professional, highly valued, and relevant nursing experience in your home country because that will become irrelevant and immaterial once you encounter the high touted "canadian experience" in the workplace. Its like a chicken and egg thing. You need a canadian experience to get that RN job. And you need to work as RN in ontario to get a canadian experience. In other words there are numerous roadblocks along the way after you complete the CNO requirements. Remember that your final objective is to get that RN job. What I will advise you to do is to conduct a research first, not a passive one but active research. You may start from immigration policy first (CIC website), its point system. Then you may look for the prevailing rates and salaries of nurses in different parts of ontario. Forget about the recruiting agencies that recruit foreign trained nurses because there are none. Then look for the prevailing or current practice of recognizing foreign credentials such as education and work experience. Since you are from Britain, you have an edge in language skills. I do not want to sound racial because that is taboo in this website but I think you have an edge if you come from Britain. For credentials, I hope the following websites will help you. http://pcerii.metropolis.net/Virtual%20Library/FinalReports/Grant2005.pdf http://www.utoronto.ca/ethnicstudies/Reitz_Skill.pdf http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20051119/w5_broken_promises_051119?s_name=&no_ads= http://www11.hrsdc.gc.ca/en/cs/sp/hrsdc/arb/publications/research/2000-001263/page08.shtml On the matter that Toronto is multicultural and welcome immigrants, yes its true. Hospitals, nursing home facilities, etc. employ immigrants whether visible or not. It is really diverse. But there is a catch. The preferred destination of immigrants is ontario particularly toronto (you can see this in CIC website, just google it). In effect, the labor market is highly saturated. Although the news about lack of personnel in health care in ontario is spreading fast, the reality is its difficult to get that RN or RPN jobs, unless of course you want to settle for caregiver or nanny jobs just to get by while you are completing your requirements. And most of those visible immigrants who are working now in the hospitals or other facilities are on the average have over 8 years of stay in canada. In other words, they spent a lot of time and must "pass through the eye of the needle" to get their desired jobs (average age of RN and RPN is over 40). Some of them are permanently working but over a majority number of nurses are working part time. If you want to take a look at canada job bank website (http://jobbank.gc.ca/Intro_en.aspx), you will see that working hours are somewhere between 24 to 30 hours per week. Some are 8, some are 12. These number of hours though pay good but you have to juggle from one hospital facility to another just to complete the 40 hour per week work. I hope I have given you an honest insight about foreign trained nurses who want to work in canada, particularly in toronto, ontario.