Studying in canada

Pediatric Critical Care Columnist · Oct 21, 2016

What are you going to study? Are you planning to advance your education in Canada by doing a Master's degree, or are you planning to emigrate to Canada and work as a nurse here?

jhoymandario · Oct 21, 2016

@notready4prime i want to work as a nurse in canada

jhoymandario · Oct 21, 2016

I want to work as a nurse in canada

Silverdragon102, BSN · Oct 21, 2016

If planning on living and working in Canada I suggest sorting your nurse registration out unless you plan on studying nursing all over again. If not what study are you planning to do?

Moved to the Nurse Registration forum

jhoymandario · Oct 21, 2016

If planning on living and working in Canada I suggest sorting your nurse registration out unless you plan on studying nursing all over again. If not what study are you planning to do?
Moved to the Nurse Registration forum

I just want to know if i get my credentials reviewed by nnas wat will happen next, i am afraid to take risk because i dont know what will happen after nnas since i am still here in saudi. Its a big amount of money for me but i also want a good life in canada.. i want to know if i need to study or what after nnas reviewed my documents. I am new to this so i want to know everything.. thank you very much

Pediatric Critical Care Columnist · Oct 21, 2016

NNAS is the first step. They're the ones who will tell you if your education +/- your experience will be acceptable for registration in Canada. They're the ones who will tell you what your options are if you're not quite able to register in Canada. There's no point in doing anything else before you get that resolved.

Health care employment in Canada just got a little bit less safe with the announcement by Alberta Health Services' CEO Verna Yiu that layoffs will be required for AHS to meet their budget target. There are hundreds of nurses across Canada who don't have jobs. Maybe by the time your credentials have been assessed and any deficiencies remedied, this might have improved, but I don't see it. If you're making good money in Saudi you might do better to hang on there, at least for the foreseeable future.

RN_Pro · Nov 2, 2016

I just want to know if i get my credentials reviewed by nnas wat will happen next, i am afraid to take risk because i dont know what will happen after nnas since i am still here in saudi. Its a big amount of money for me but i also want a good life in canada.. i want to know if i need to study or what after nnas reviewed my documents. I am new to this so i want to know everything.. thank you very much

Honestly, if I were you and I knew what I know now, I would forget about getting assessed by NNAS and just study in Canada to get your BScN from a Canadian university. It will save you a lot of hassle and probably take the same amount of time that fulfilling all the requirements for licensing would take. The RN bridging program takes 20 months of classes to complete (a regular nursing degree takes 24 months of classes to complete) and there are only about 50 spaces available in the course so you are unlikely to get into the bridge program.

As for what a review of your credentials from NNAS would look like:

I can guarantee you that your NNAS Advisory Report will say that you are "non comparable" with those who received their nursing education in Canada. So I've just saved you the $650 USD for your NNAS report--now you can use the money to buy textbooks for a Canadian BScN program or something!

This is how it works if you go the NNAS route:

NNAS--pay, submit all paperwork, syllabi, translation of syllabi if necessary

NNAS--receive Advisory Report: it will say 'non comparable'

CNO--pay and receive CNO number, NNAS submits advisory report to CNO

CNO--will tell you that if you want to be licensed as a registered nurse you must

a) go to university in Canada and get a BScN

b) complete the bridge program (only 50 spaces) or

c) take the OSCE at Touchstone, which is a $500 test of some of your nursing skills and knowledge--which is supposed to be able to determine whether you have equivalent knowledge to Canadian nursing education. This test is difficult to register for as there are not enough spaces. The pass rate of this test (it's called IENCAP) is quite low.

After all this, CNO (or whatever regulatory body you apply to) decides whether to license you, say no, or ask you to take more courses or provide further documentation of your experiences. NNAS does not decide whether your education/experience will be acceptable, CNO does. Also just as a side note, the people doing the assessments at NNAS are not even nurses.

Summary: Take a Canadian nursing education program (not from Niagara College or other colleges) that results in your obtaining a BScN from Canada, and you will avoid the hassle listed above.