kaz19

Hi Snowhugs, we have two kids aswell (2 and 5) and this is the one thing that keeps me putting the breaks on. I cant help feeling guilty about the grandparents but in saying that we have decided that we are going to go for it before 2010 - which is only really a year and half away. My OH is a chef and its his job which will hopefully get us in so sorry dont know anything about the nursing stuff.

At least you are able to get to the expo - I live in Scotland and dont have the time to get to London but hopefully early next year there is something up here.

Good luck

The4BellsLondon

sno flake - do it now - before they can put up a fight - my 13 year old is using all emotional black mail she can think of!!

lauder99

Hi snowhugs

You shouldn't have a problem finding a job you want to do there are hundreds of vacancies on Calgary healths website. http://www.calgaryhealthregion.ca/su...sing_title.htm

The main thing is to get CARNA approved after that its pretty straightforward. You may be told that there are issues over how much mental health or obs/gynae training you have had, we were. I am not sure where this comes from as we have tried to find brit nurses who have been denied by CARNA and couldn't.

My OH is the nurse in our clan and she found the CARNA wait the worst part of the whole process. This might be because we went all the way to Calgary expecting a job interview and being told that Lynne probably wouldn't get a licence as she is project 2000 trained and wouldn't have enough of either above elements to qualify. Its all come good in the end but that 12 week wait was a killer.

Calgary health have been pretty good since then and all the paperwork has gone smoothly so nothing to worry about there.

Cant wait to get over there now we have 2 littl'uns at 5 and 3 so I know where you are coming from with that side of things.

Cheers
Tom

snowhugs

thanks for that, am hoping not to have too many problems re mental health and obs/gynae stuff as ..... well I trained before project 2000 and to my horror we had loads of mental health !!

ibbye13

Hi my OH wrote the text you read. I am a nurse myself and hoping to come along with him too but on a separate application as I have two kids from previous marriage(we thought it would be straightforward if I put them on my application rather than his). Anyway Foothills is the hospital he eyeballed when he went to visit Calgary last year and is one that we are considering. We may get the chance to visit mid July (nearly there) and we are going to look out for other hospitals within Calgary. So are you starting to work in August? What specialty do you do?

Judy in Calgary

I think you may be making a mistake, Ibbye. If your partner is a nurse, he belongs to a skill level that allows his/her spouse or common law partner to get a spousal open work permit (SOWP). Of course, since you're also a nurse, the reverse is true too. If you had been the principal applicant, you would have belonged to a skill level that would have made him eligible for a spousal open work permit too.

Anyway, I think it would have been better if you'd applied as a family from the start. That is, your partner would have been the principal work permit applicant, you would have applied for an SOWP at the same time, and he would have named your children as his accompanying dependents.

I think that, if you submit two independent applications, it'll actually make things more complicated if you want to stay on in Canada as a family later on. I'm not an immigration expert, and I don't know if that is true. But I have a gut feeling that you have not simplified things for yourselves, and you may actually have made things more complicated. I may be wrong, but I think this at least warrants a separate question, with a title thread that is suitably specific, on the Canada Immigration forum (not the Meet and Greet forum).

Hope that helps.
x

susie q

hi ibby,
im going on the 3rd august to calgary and start work on the 5th .i have a post on a surgical/oncology ward work in surgical ward here in uk
judy is right about twp i am principal applicant with my husband getting spousal work permit allows him to take on any job which he can do whilst i have my work permit
susie q

ibbye13

Hi Susie! good luck. Hope to meet you one day when we come ourselves to foothills medical centre. I work for HPB cancer centre, while OH do ENT surgery. Wish you settle well into your new job and new home.

snowhugs

Okay heres yet another question,

Have been to several sites and nursing threads and cant seem to get exact answer,
Its this.. Why does a non union member get paid so much more in a hospital,?

From experience , I never found any real reason to be in a union and if it means getting paid even less for the privilage of being able to strike now and then, then count me out! am I missing something, it seems health employers are rewarding non union members, but then again there also seems to be an undercurrent of info which states that if you are non union you get all the crap shift lines and have to work all the holidays...

lauder99

Hi

I haven't seen any info to suggest that non union staff in Calgary get paid anymore than union. I'm intrigued by your research. Nursing seems heavily unionised and therefore I would expect to meets some resistance of the sort you describe if you decide to work non union. Lynne has had no discussion with the hospital about whether she is union or not and has been appointed based on the Alberta collective agreement terms and conditions which don't seem too shabby I have to say. You can see the salary scale from those agreements here http://www.una.ab.ca/collectiveagree...une%202007.pdf

As a general rule the collective agreement is far more nurse-centric than agenda for change and some of the benefits in terms of advance notice of shifts etc. are absolutely incredible compared to the NHS. We wil see how much of it is delivered but it seems that given the current and future nursing shortage the union is in quite a powerful position.

All the above is only based on my own reading so if someone has actual experience I would be as keen as snowhugs to hear how it works in practice.


Cheers
Tom

LMBrian

Hello snowhugs,
Hope expo went ok! we are in similar boat wth 2 kids, (2 and 3 1/2). We are also at the begining. I am an electrician and going the TFW route.

We thought Expo was ok-relocating to Calgary so plenty of info on Alberta.

snowhugs

thanks to all, i have been looking in all the wrong places!
Salary stuff looks great and ties in more with what Helen Downey said at expo show.
Just cant wait to go house on the market but no lookers yet! very disheartening

lauder99

Hi snowhugs

its worth bearing in mind that Calgary health will honour your existing experience so you would start on the point of the scale relevant to your Uk exoerience.

Good luck on the house thankfully that wasnt an issue we had to deal with.

Cheers
Tom

ibbye13

Hi how r u? Its good to hear that you have sent the registration form to CARNA. Just be aware that CARNA can take up to 2 months to tell you that they have received all your documents. They won't contact you unless they need more documents. Here is my timeline Nov07 applied to CARNA got the eligibility letter to work as a graduate nurse mid March 08. In between i had to email them a few times cos i wasn't sure that they got my application, the clue was that my credit card was debited for the registration fee.

After that eveything moves very fast...eLMO was sent 4 days from Calgary Health Region after receiving the eligibility letter. Then it will time for you to send all your paperwork to the embassy.

Helen Dowey email add is at the back of the NMC magazine but its not her picture. She is a young lady over 60 to be polite. I am hoping to meet her again in 2 weeks time in Calgary. I am taking my family to see the place and we are going for 2 weeks. Been to Canada several times in the past but no one from my present family has been so the reason of this trip. My OH is also a nurse.

snowhugs

hello to you too!

Thanks for CARNA info when I get paper work through do I contact Helen, or Calgary health or does it all go automatically?

Just need to sell Damm house, then am free to up and go when we need to! Have already said goodbye to so many things in my head...

Where are you working? have you got kids? and your OH where does he work?

I hope it does go quickly I am not very good at waiting for anything, ( I demanded my c section be brought forward because i simply could not carry on!!! ) Having said that, i was very very poorly and virtually bed ridden towards the end!