USA trained BSN-RN license transfer to Canada

[tjonathas21]

Hello

I am a USA trained RN with over 5 years of experience. I have and BSN Degree and a Master degree to work as a NP. I got married this years and move to the Ottawa area. I started the process to transfer my license over to Canada from USA last October 2015. I called the CNO and I was told to contact NNAS for educational evaluation first.

The NNAS are a USA based third party company that reviews education for the Nursing Boards in Canada. Their reviewing criteria are unknown to me even after I asked them, they stated that it is confidential and they will not disclose this information to me. They told me that it takes about 6 to 8 weeks to process paperwork that is sent to them by mail. I had to call them multiple times, they could not find my paperwork, my school had to send them the same paperwork several times before it was finally found and processed.

They requested paperwork is for verification of employment, verification of education (which includes transcript, course description or syllabus of each course), Verification of Nclex exam with a notarized paper for the Nclex to release my actual Nclex grade to them. Plus, I had to pay them $650.00 US dollars for them to start the process.

The report was completed 8 months later around the beginning of July 2016. They issued an evaluation to the board of nursing that was unfavorable to me. They deemed my education as not equivalent to that of Canada. Although they ask for specific classes to be evaluated at the end of their report, I was given a 38% equivalence rate. I asked them to explain this to me and honestly they could not explain it because to me, it's confidential. I was told this percentage is not uncommon for USA trained RN. Mind you my husband studied nursing in Canada, we studied in same books by the same publishers, and the only difference is that they had Canada in front of all their books.

The NNAS claim that they look for certain words in the syllabus to see if I meet those criteria. I explained to them the syllabus gives you a brief description of the class and the contents that you are expected to have mastered. The remain exact topic studied needs to be followed through by going to the delineated chapters of each nursing book as outlined by the syllabi in order to provide a fair assessment of the topics that was mastered. Then I was told that they do not have the time to go look in every book, it should be in the syllabi or they assume that I never learned it.

I ended up have to go the dean of my school in order to request for them to send NNAS all my nursing education courses' syllabi. Then, I called NNAS again, and they did not receive the paperwork that was FedEx to them by the school. I was very disappointed by the work of NNAS because I went a prestigious Catholic University in USA, graduated with a 3.4 GPA, received two grade based scholarships and a job offer before graduation.

I was advised by my family to call NNAS. So I did call, I asked them why they issued this report that is not fair to my level of knowledge, training, and application of nursing sciences?

Then, I realize that although they requested these listed classes.

1 - Medical surgical for adult

2- Maternal and infant

3- Care of children

4- Psychiatric

5-Geriatrics

6- Community health

7- Anatomy and Physiology

8- Pathophysiology

9- Pharmacology

They actually look for other component of the nursing program not covered under these classes such as community nursing, health assessment and lab, simulation classes and competencies, ethics, professional role, nursing research, therapeutic interventions and lab, professional nursing, medication calculation and more.

So now, August 2016, I am still waiting 10 months later for another report that the NNAS agreed to re-issue because they realized that the prior report was not appropriate before I can get to step 2 which is applying to the CNO. The CNO actually is much quicker than NNAS, and I truly believe that they would do a better job by themselves or allow USA RN to either practice based the Nclex scores or allow us to take the exam again since it is the actual measure of competency for entry of practice for both Anglo-Canadian provinces and US States.

Does anyone have any recommendation for me?

Because I am here in I cannot work because I am waiting on NNAS…

How can we go about changing this process into a both safe and seamless process?

Thanks you, sincerely

Tee.

[joanna73, BSN, RN]

Unfortunately, you will need to be patient and wait it out. Canada and Ontario in particular does not need nurses. Many Canadian educated nurses across the country cannot find work. Your situation is not uncommon.

Finding a job once your credentials have been assessed is another matter altogether. Ontario has been cutting registered nurses for the last 10 years in order to balance their budget.

[dishes, BSN, RN]

You are not the only IEN who has concerns about NNAS, you can find threads discussing NNAS by using the search tool in the top right hand corner. Also, click on the World Nursing section, (your thread is currently in the General Nursing section), there are recent threads in International Nursing and the Nursing in Canada sections.

[dishes, BSN, RN]

Do the NNAS forms only ask for the course details from the nine classes you listed? The Education Domain Breakdown Table on the NNAS video 'Applicant Guide to Securing Course Work Materials' lists nineteen domains, they are;1. Nursing care of adult medical, 2. Nursing care of adult surgical, 3. Maternal infant nursing, 4. Gynecology, 5. Pediatric nursing, 6. Gerontology nursing, 7. Community health, 8. anatomy and physiology, 9. Pathophysiology, 10. Microbiology, 11. Pharmacology and medications, 12. IV therapy 13. Nutrition, 14. Fundamentals of nursing, 15. Health assessment across the lifespan, 16. Leadership, 17.Ethical & legal practice, 18. Applied research, 19. Primary health care.

[loriangel14, RN]

It's not a license " transfer". It's applying for a nursing license in another country. You are being assessed just like everyone else.

[tjonathas21]

yes, these are the classes requested as per there PDF document to the school.

[tjonathas21]

thank you

[elkpark]

You're not "transferring" a license, you're applying for nursing licensure in a different country, with a different system of nursing education and practice. Why should that process be "seamless"?

[dishes, BSN, RN]

yes, these are the classes requested as per there PDF document to the school.

Do you have a copy of the classes requested from the PDF? Have you seen the video on NNAS website entitled 'Applicant Guide to Securing Course Work Materials' did you see the screen shot of the Education domain breakdown table? It has 19 domains along with the boxes for theory hours, Sim/lab hours, clinical hours. Has anyone asked why there is a discrepancy between what they show in the video and the document that applicants send to their schools to complete?

[Silverdragon102, BSN]

Moved to the International Nursing forum

[dishes, BSN, RN]

tjonathas, if you are serious about trying to improve the NNAS process for IENs, I think you should start by writing a letter to NNAS about your application experience. NNAS needs to hear from IENs what the barriers and facilitators were during their assessment process. They need to know there is a need to have greater transparency in order to facilitate successful outcomes.

[dishes, BSN, RN]

The NNAS are a USA based third party company that reviews education for the Nursing Boards in Canada. Their reviewing criteria are unknown to me even after I asked them, they stated that it is confidential and they will not disclose this information to me.

The report was completed 8 months later around the beginning of July 2016. They issued an evaluation to the board of nursing that was unfavorable to me. They deemed my education as not equivalent to that of Canada. Although they ask for specific classes to be evaluated at the end of their report, I was given a 38% equivalence rate. I asked them to explain this to me and honestly they could not explain it because to me, it's confidential. I was told this percentage is not uncommon for USA trained RN. Mind you my husband studied nursing in Canada, we studied in same books by the same publishers, and the only difference is that they had Canada in front of all their books.

The NNAS claim that they look for certain words in the syllabus to see if I meet those criteria. I explained to them the syllabus gives you a brief description of the class and the contents that you are expected to have mastered. The remain exact topic studied needs to be followed through by going to the delineated chapters of each nursing book as outlined by the syllabi in order to provide a fair assessment of the topics that was mastered. Then I was told that they do not have the time to go look in every book, it should be in the syllabi or they assume that I never learned it.

I truly believe that they would do a better job by themselves or allow USA RN to either practice based the Nclex scores or allow us to take the exam again since it is the actual measure of competency for entry of practice for both Anglo-Canadian provinces and US States.

The formation of NNAS and the development of the assessment tool is discussed in the article entitled A New Model for Assessing Entry-Level Education of Internationally Educated Nurses: A Retrospective Perspective, Journal of Nursing Regulation, by F. A. Shaffer 2016. The assessment tool comes from the national entry-to practice competencies, these competencies are used to guide the development of curricula in Canadian nursing education programs. The language used in Canadian BSN curricula reflects the entry to practice competencies and NNAS needs to see similar language in the IENs curricula to consider it comparable. After reading the article, I have the impression that the NNAS advisory report provides not only an education domain report, ie the percentage of applicants hours of theory, sims, clinical as compared to a Canadian BSN, but also the entry-to-practice competency percentages. Is this how the initial report appeared to you? If so, is it the entry-to-practice competencies that were deficient on your report?