alianeco

Hello! I am a Canadian RN and I've recently been toying with the idea of living in France. I was wondering if anyone here can tell me what it's like from a Canadian RNs point of view. How does the work compare? What about the health care system? Is...

Hello! I'm a Canadian RN who wants to get a different experience. I recently posted a question regarding what it is like to work as a nurse in France (pay, scope of practice, and what not), and now I'm thinking a bit broader. I was wondering if anyon...

I used to work in Calgary (Alberta), and they do a lot of sponsoring of international nurses. I think most of the health regions in larger cities would have programs and budgets to get you here and get you nursing :) Try Calgary. It's a neat place to...

Thank you all! That is great information to know. Perhaps I'll look into some other destinations instead :) Thank you especially Fiona! The things I didn't even know about my own country's nursing issues...

Have you tried the Canadian Nurses Association website? It has some good information. Follow this URL to the CNAs page of links. These are all the provincial RN websites. http://www.cna-nurses.ca/CNA/about/members/provincial/default_e.aspx Hopefully...

Why is that? In North America we have a nursing shortage, so many nurses are recruited from all around the world. Is this not the case in the UK?

We have RTs, but we do our own suctioning and ABGs. The RTs do rounds several times per shift and we call them if there is a big problem. They also make ventilator changes and take part in decision making.

I'm new to my ICU, but it seems that we generally have a 2:1 ratio. I've seen the occasional 3:1, but those patients are generally less acute. I'm in a small hospital and it seems our ICU frequently hangs on to patients who do not require ICU care s...

This is a really helpful post. I've been in L&D for a year and I have never nursed a family with a loss. I know it's going to happen sooner or later and what scares me is that I won't be a good enough nurse. I have no children, so I don't see how...

I think that the coaching we give to laboring women has more to do with helping them feel more positively about their birth experience than it does with having more physically positive outcomes. A lot of times coaching helps a woman feel in control....

I usually love working with doulas. Since most of my patients get epidurals and sleep through their labor, I find that working with a doula is a good learning experience. That being said, some of them are very intrusive and couterproductive. I had a...

This wasn't my patient, but a patient (who I'm assuming was about to have an ARM) asked another nurse on my unit if the doctor was going to break her bladder. Hehe. I believe the nurse explained the difference to her. I certainly hope nobody broke h...

I've given narcan a few times to babies whose mom's had had narcotic close to delivery time and who are very floppy and not making respiratory effort. As far as I can recall, PPV was always tried first and although the heart rate improved, baby still...

Fiona59, I think you're being discrete enough... I'm not entirely convinced we're at the same hospital. But I suppose it's probably the same all over Calgary.

Hello! I'm a happy labor and delivery nurse in Canada, but lately I've been feeling like I might like to try doing some contract nursing in the Canadian north. I'm a fairly novice nurse (about half a year of medical experience and almost a year of la...

Janfrn, I think I work at the same Hospital as you! "Center of Excellence". Perhaps I was trying to word things carefully before. I know what you mean about being short staffed... I think we may have had 2 full staffed shifts since I started

Hello! I'm a happy labor and delivery nurse, but lately I've been feeling like I might like to try doing some contract nursing in the north. I'm a fairly novice nurse (about half a year of medical experience and almost a year of labor and delivery), ...

Dalhousie university (in Nova Scotia) has a Masters in Nurse Practitioner option. I haven't heard much about it though. I only looked at it because I'd love to live in Halifax :) I believe you can do a Masters in Nurse Practitioner through Athabasca ...

I've worked in a couple of provinces. I started off in PEI and now I'm in Alberta. They both have positives and negatives though. I found PEI to be great for working conditions and stress level. The workload was high, but I wasn't constantly being ho...

Thanks for the replies! This is something that I really want to do, but it's so easy to get caught up in fears since it's very different from what I'm doing now. But I suppose when I switched from a medical unit to labor and delivery, I was just as t...

I think having a 4th degree tear with one baby is a perfectly good reason to have a c/s for your next. Jeepers! She'll probably have pelvic floor problems for the rest of her life.

Wow. I haven't seen one yet and hope I never do. I've heard of them happening with amnioinfusions and I'm a bit nervous each time I do one.

L&D is one of those special areas where the staffing doesn't go down at nights, so I think we get good and used to turning around and living our lives when everyone else is sleeping. In my rotation I do two weeks of nights and two weeks of days....