Quebec Graduate wants to take CRNE

Pediatric Critical Care Columnist · Nov 27, 2009

One doesn't apply to write the exam, one applies to be registered as a nurse in a province. One of the requirements for registration in all provinces but Quebec is the successful completion of the CRNE. Most Colleges of Registered Nurses will allow graduates who have never been registered anywhere to write the exam in their jurisdiction BUT they have to have applied through the province where they were educated, and in order to be registered in a province other than the one where they were educated they must first be registered in the province where they were educated. (Am I making sense?) For example, if you went to nursing school in Ontario but will be moving to Alberta right after graduation, you must apply for registration in Ontario and receive permission to write the CRNE from CNO. Once that has been obtained, you may then apply to physically write the exam in Alberta. BUT Alberta won't register you even if you get a perfect score on the exam until you register in Ontario, because that's the province that approved the educational program you completed. You have no choice but to register twice in that situation.

The thing about being educated in Quebec is that Quebec is a law unto itself and has its own exam, which is not the same as the CRNE. The only College of Registered Nurses that I could find that does not specifically exclude Quebec graduates from writing the CRNE without having written the Quebec exam is CARNA. But there's still the issue of obtaining a license in the province where you were educated... which you can't do in Quebec without writing the Quebec exam. Quebec will accept the CRNE for those educated outside Quebec and the rest of Canada will accept the OIIQ exam for thsoe educated in Quebec, but they aren't interchangeable. Another stumbling block might be the fact that your girlfriend is attending CEGEP and not a university program since the baccalaureate degree is required as entry to practice in most provinces now.

My advice to the two of you is to draft an email explaining the situation and send it to the registrar of each of the Colleges of Nurses in Canada (Links to the Provincial Colleges of Nursing) and ask them what can be done to solve your problem. I'm not sure how it can be resolved or if it can. Be prepared for a lot of time and money to be expended in the search.

dwreckp · Nov 27, 2009

Thank you so much for your detailed response. The situation is a little confusing, but hopefully writing to the different colleges will help. In a worse case scenario, is it possible for her to write the OIIQ exam and then write the CRNE exam in another province?

Pediatric Critical Care Columnist · Nov 27, 2009

That's a question only the individual Colleges can answer. The idea did cross my mind as a worst-case scenario. Just let your girlfriend know that the two exams are quite different and the questions on the CRNE are fairly ambiguously framed. If she does end up writing both she should not even begin studying for the CRNE until she has written the OIIQ exam because she'll get confused and probably do poorly on both.