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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.
The reason the regulatory bodies selected NCLEX is because NCSBN's proposal met their requirements for a computer based exam and ASI's proposal did not. ...IENs had differences in practice expectations as well as communication issues that led to termination. That is the reason the regulatory bodies want IENs education to be assessed for entry to practice competencies that are similar to Canadians.
At the end of the day though they selected NCLEX-RN. If they felt it was only second best or were otherwise unhappy with it as an entry-to-practice examination...it was still their decision to choose it. It seems there are pro-NCLEX camp and anti NCLEX camps within the Canadian system. But the exam is the exam.
No doubt that there were IENs with different practice expectations, nursing knowledge, communication issues, etc etc. I believe it, especially after attending the HealthForce Ontario IENCAP course--there are a lot of variations throughout the world of "nurse" and that is okay, but we need nurses licensed in Canada to meet Canadian expectations. I understand and agree 100% on that. Like I said, it is the means by which IENs are assessed that is my issue. NNAS as a tool is proving to have so many issues in validity, and it is finding US-educated BSN's "non-comparable" when previous to NNAS they would have been "comparable". The issues are to the point that the CNO is reviewing all "non-comparable" cases and also now treating "somewhat comparable" as "comparable" because the assessment just doesn't catch comparable education. Yet, licensing bodies continue to use it and CNO continues to say the assessment is valid. There is no doubt IENs need to be assessed. There is also no doubt the assessments currently used are not doing the job they are set out to do. And that is what is unfair.
At the end of the day though they selected NCLEX-RN. If they felt it was only second best or were otherwise unhappy with it as an entry-to-practice examination...it was still their decision to choose it. It seems there are pro-NCLEX camp and anti NCLEX camps within the Canadian system. But the exam is the exam.No doubt that there were IENs with different practice expectations, nursing knowledge, communication issues, etc etc. I believe it, especially after attending the HealthForce Ontario IENCAP course--there are a lot of variations throughout the world of "nurse" and that is okay, but we need nurses licensed in Canada to meet Canadian expectations. I understand and agree 100% on that. Like I said, it is the means by which IENs are assessed that is my issue. NNAS as a tool is proving to have so many issues in validity, and it is finding US-educated BSN's "non-comparable" when previous to NNAS they would have been "comparable". The issues are to the point that the CNO is reviewing all "non-comparable" cases and also now treating "somewhat comparable" as "comparable" because the assessment just doesn't catch comparable education. Yet, licensing bodies continue to use it and CNO continues to say the assessment is valid. There is no doubt IENs need to be assessed. There is also no doubt the assessments currently used are not doing the job they are set out to do. And that is what is unfair.
It's possible that Canadian regulatory bodies will do away with a national licensing exam for Canadian educated nurses all together.
The licensing bodies will to continue to use NNAS, as there would be political and economic repercussions if they abandoned it and tried to create a new tool. Also, if you read about the IEN licensing process in Canada over the past decade, you will see the assessment processes are not static, they are dynamic.
The findings of the US-educated BSN being found non-comparable when they were previously found comparable, needs to be reviewed and an explanation given. I hope the Canadian-US educated nurses will lobby their MPPs and MPs to investigate this matter.
dishes, BSN, RN
3,950 Posts
The licensing bodies know how much time and tax payers' money has been and continues to be spent on the NNAS tool, they are not going to start from scratch and create a different tool, they are going to modify their response to the results.