International Nurses start work faster in New Brunswick, Canada

Hello everyone.

New Brunswick is quite known as the Prime gateway of Atlantic Canada. One of the three maritime provinces of Canada and the only province that is constitutionally Bilingual (English and French).  I personally still haven't had the chance to witness how wonderful the place is, but with so much readings about the province, I am pretty convinced that New Brunswick is another great place to try.

I had the chance to personally communicate with Maam Jocelyn Lessard, the Regulatory consultant of Nurses Association of New Brunswick. According to her, the province as a whole is still facing intense shortage of nurses. This is largely because New Brunswickers are not into Nursing. Lots of their local nurses resorted to looking for another field of work away from the nursing profession and also, the number of students getting into school of nursing is declining over the past years. With this, hiring of foreign nurses is the only fast and short term solution that they can think of. She said New Brunswick is thankful that Filipino nurses are starting to consider the idea of living and working in her province. During the past few months, they have noted for an increased number of applications from foreign nurses, handful are from the Philippines.

I also had the chance to talk with Ms. Melanie Richardson, the Nurse recruiter of River Valley Health Authority. She also confirmed the fact that New Brunswick is facing nursing shortages and that her colleagues from other health authorities are actively recruiting foreign nurses to join the workforce. She mentioned however that much of the vacancies are in rural areas, in primary facilities with 35-50 bed capacity. Obviously their local nurses don't like to work in rural places so foreign nurses will opt to fill-in the vacancies.

In order to know more on how to obtain RN registration with New Brunswick as a foreign nurse, Please visit this link:

http://www.nanb.nb.ca/index.php/rn-registration-international

Would also like to share this informative link, to discover how breathtaking the place is.

http://www.tourismnewbrunswick.ca/Home/AboutNewBrunswick.aspx

God Bless...

Another confirmation that New Brunswick Canada is in actual shortage of nurses and that they welcome internationally educated nurses to join them. Attached is an excerpt taken from New Brunswick's Regional Health Authority B community summer/spring 2009 newsletter.

Excerpt:

RHA B is also working with a New Brunswick
company to recruit experienced international nurses.
This initiative is in the development stages, but it is
anticipated that ten nurses will be recruited within
the next twelve months. International recruitment
has been a successful strategy in zones in the past.
The international nurses will be offered support to
integrate into the community and our healthcare
system. They will be a great addition to the RHA B
healthcare team.

Here's the link to their newletter:

http://www.rhab-rrsb.ca/pdfs/reporttocomm_springsummer09.pdf

Enjoy reading. God Bless

An article issued four months ago also confirmed the shortage of Nurses in New Brunswick.

It is a good thing to know that their local nurses does recognize the fact that their province is indeed facing shortage of nurses and that they are actively  taking part in finding effective solutions to the problem. The New Brunswick nursing union is alarmed with the impending shortage and so collectively they've raised this concern during the annual conference of the Nurses Association of New Brunswick. 

This is something different if we are to compare with the reactions of most US trained nurses when discussing about shortage of nurses in USA. In US, when a foreign nurse expresses his/her desire to work in US, most if not, american nurses would answer that they do not need foreign nurses any longer, denying the ugly truth that in the truest sense, US is still in a state of nursing crisis. In New Brunswick Canada, it is totally the other way around wherein local nurses recognizes the truth, and welcomes foreign nurses with arms wide open. Importinhg internationally educated nurses is one of the solutions that they are strongly considering aside from encouraging their nurses to upgrade their title to Nurse Practitioners so they could perform a larger role in health care.

More than 100 nurses from across New Brunswick will discuss options for dealing with an impending nursing shortage at the Nurses Association of New Brunswick's annual conference today.
Only about 20 per cent of the province's registered nurses are under the age of 35, according to statistics collected in 2007.
Judith Oulton, an international health-care consultant who was born in New Brunswick, is scheduled to speak to the nurses this afternoon about industry trends and concerns, and the many opportunities that pop up in difficult times.
"There are many challenges facing health care and the nursing profession in New Brunswick, Canada and globally, like an aging workforce, the shortages we've seen and decreasing dollars," she said.
"But there are also many opportunities that present themselves. As you look at budgets shrinking and demand increasing, you also see the increased recognition of the value of nurses and the vast roles that they can perform."
Oulton said a small province such as New Brunswick will have to embrace efficient health-care models and borrow best practices from other jurisdictions.
She said nurse practitioners could play a bigger role in patient care in the province's health-care facilities, as they do at many hospitals in the United States.
"What I think needs to happen here is (the recognition) of the need for nurse practitioners," she said.
"The United States has a lot of experience in this and uses the role well ... Places in New Brunswick's underserved areas have a huge opportunity to work nurse practitioners into the system."
Roxanne Tarjan, executive director of the Nurses Association of New Brunswick, said most nurses understand that there's a need for creativity in the health-care system.
She said that could mean creative staffing measures and new roles for nurses, but it also opens up a world of new career opportunities.
And Tarjan said patient care will benefit by keeping nurses happy.
"We have more and more evidence that utilizing registered nurses in ways we never imagined is not reducing the quality of patient care," she said.
"We have all kinds of evidence that it's enhancing that care and it's cost-effective, and there is a huge satisfaction level for patients."