....Hey I'm a Paediatric trained nurse over in the UK and wondered if there were any Paediatric only trained nurses on here working in either Edmonton (the Stollery) or Calgary (the childrens hospital) and how they found the whole appliction process and is nursing very different from the UK? I currently work in Intensive Care....
Thanks and look forward to hearing from anyone who can help!

Lisa x

Hi Lisa

I am a Charge Nurse at a London hospital and I intend to go to Calgary. Just to warn you that the process is long and stressful. I have visited a couple of hospitals in Calgary which is the Foothills and the Children hospital. I went there last October and last month i was there for 2 weeks.

They are short of all kind of nurses. I remembered last October when the recruiter came to London she had a very poor response but she came back to London in June and this time there were 2000 applicants for nursing jobs in Alberta.

My advice to you is to start to get your registration from CARNA, the nursing board for Alberta. That itself will take about 2-3 months to get. Everything moves very slowly in terms of administration. When you get your temporary registration then you contact your employer so that they will send you the LMO( Labour market opinion) usually takes 2-3 days via email. With that then you go to the embassy, do your medical then wait for the work permit.
From start to finish it can take 6-8 months.

Have you got a job there? You will need a job offer so that will speed up your application. I assume that you have one or else the time frame will be longer.

FYI i have started the process in Nov 07 and got my temporary registration in March, LMO arrived a few days later, sent my papers to the embassy in May, got the meds request in June and did it on 9th of June and still waiting for the work permit until now.

Mine is a bit longer because half way i was hesitant to go to Calgary so i delayed sending the paperwork needed.

Hope that has safisfied part of your question. I dont know too much about paeds but i had the chance to visit several wards in Foothill hospital. Its the biggest hospital in Calgary. They look good and its a ratio 1:5 patients. They are nursed in bays of 2 patients with 1 bath shared between them. Acute patients are nursed in a bay of 4 in the middle of the ward. Kardex is in form of entry on a laptop in from of each bay. Very clean. Nurses wear scrubs ...all kinds of color and design..some with mickey mouse scrub...i did not know who were the nurses or care assistants....thats the way they like it.

Bye for now

You may find you are short in clinical and theory hours on other stuff as generally Canada likes general training where UK is more specialised. Province will decide once they review your transcripts

Lisa and steve

Welcome to BE we are also trying to get to Calgary and have applied for an assessment of my transcript, the hardest part so far has been getting info from all my british universities sent to Canada. You should factor in £30-40 per institution. You have to try and send your thing in then forget it, a lot easier said than done.

Good luck any questions dont hesitate to ask.

Stacey and Mark

hi
ive been at the foothills for 3 weeks high ratio of nurses to patients all documentation done on computer,everybody wears scrubs which you buy yourself. have at least 6 weeks orientation.shifts 7.15-3.30,3.15-11.30,11.15-7.30 plus 12 hr shifts if you want,carna can take an age with verification etc but thats the way they are even with canadian nurses.im not a peadeatric nurse so cant help you with that but im sure they have vacances at the childrens hosp, pm me if you have any other questions
susie q

Sorry to possibly be the bearer of bad news but you may struggle being 'just' a childrens nurse. (I use the term 'just' really really loosely!!!)

The training here is general - adult, paed and mental health - and the CRNE (the Canadian Registered Nurse Exam) is based on all these areas with a heavy weighting towards adults.

I'm just doing the Prep course for the exam. I'm a Diploma Adult nurse and a Degree Childrens Nurse so I was really lucky. I know of others who have had to make up their clinical time in the other specialities before coming over.

If you're interested in the Stollery in Edmonton I can give you the name of the lady on Regional Recruitment who may be able to advise you further.

Don't let my post put you off trying though. They are crying out for nurses here.

Good luck
Nikki

Hey Nikki

If you could send me the detail of the lady at the stollery that would be fab, I have a contact at Calgary but looks like we are now applying for Edmonton as the police have stopped recruiting in Calgary which is what the other half does!

From What I have read on the Carna website and speaking to certain agencies and people in Canada, I will be short of clinical experience, in areas such as Adult, mental health and obstetrics! But Carn have just introduced an International educated nurses temporary work permit, so I would work as a Grad nurse and do extra training while I was out there!

I know it's a long hall but I think it will be worth it if we can get into canada!

Thanks to everyone else who have posted replies all very informative! Keep them coming, still looking for a paeds trained nurse? fingers crossed!
Lisa x