In 2018, nurse Julie Kane bought her great-grandmother’s house in Elliston, on Newfoundland’s Bonavista Peninsula, with dreams of moving home from Alaska with her husband, also a nurse, and working in the area. But Kane says the process of getting licensed to work as a nurse makes it difficult to turn her dream into reality. “It’s just been, what I would consider, one obstacle after another,” Kane said from the office of Trua Health and Wellness, a health clinic she owns in Anchorage. There is a shortage of health care workers in the province, which has forced the closure of some rural emergency rooms this summer and created long wait times for patients in the ER. The province’s medical association estimates that about 125,000 people in the province do not have access to a family doctor. Meanwhile, Kane – who was born in Newfoundland and studied to become a registered nurse in the province – would like to see the process for getting licensed as a nurse practitioner streamlined and streamlined to cut red tape. Kane provides primary care and other services as a nurse practitioner at the Trua Health and Wellness clinic she owns in Alaska. (Submitted by Julie Kane) Kane moved to the United States in 1998 because there were few full-time jobs in the province at the time. She said she returned to the province to work as a registered nurse for a stint in the early 2000s before returning to the US again. Kane said she became a registered nurse in 2017 after graduating from an online master’s degree in nursing at Illinois-based Chamberlain University and passing board exams to become licensed in the United States. “I’ve been working full-time as a nurse ever since. I also worked part-time in the Alaska National Guard,” she said. In order to work as a nurse in Newfoundland and Labrador, Kane said she first had to be licensed as a registered nurse — a process she said took six months to a year. Kane’s RN license was approved last month, and now she has to go through a second process to get licensed as a nurse practitioner, but she said she doesn’t know how long that will take. Kane says she works part-time as a nurse in the Alaska National Guard. (Submitted by Julie Kane) Because Kane studied to become a nurse outside Canada, the College of Registered Nurses of Newfoundland and Labrador says it must evaluate her education to ensure it meets Canadian standards before it can authorize her to write the Canadian Nurse Practitioner Exam. The exam is required for licensing and is held twice a year, in May and October. Kane also said she was told it would be easier to first get licensed as a nurse in another province, such as Ontario or British Columbia. Kane said she decided to do just that and will try to get licensed in Ontario and transfer the credentials to Newfoundland and Labrador because she said the Ontario regulator will accept her American licensing exam. But he said the process could include English language proficiency tests and thousands in registration and application fees. “I don’t feel like I have to go through other provinces to get a job in Newfoundland,” he said. Meanwhile, Kane said it was easy to transfer her nursing credentials to the U.S. in the 1990s, and she thinks the process could be simplified because she says the training programs in both countries are similar. “I wouldn’t have to fill out any more forms,” she said, who also believes it would be beneficial to have someone to help guide applicants through the complicated process. “I thought it would be easier for me to go back home.”
Few internationally trained nurses in NL
Lynn Power, the executive director of the Newfoundland Labrador College of Registered Nurses says the college is trying to cut through the red tape for people trying to get a nursing license in Atlantic Canada. “We only started nurse practitioner practice in Newfoundland and Labrador in 1998-99 and in other countries it’s at different stages of development, different approaches, different elements and scope, even different terminology,” Power said. “So it’s not that easy to make the comparison,” he said, adding that the college needs to ensure nurses meet core competencies to protect patient safety. Power said a nursing professor from Memorial University or another expert could verify the curriculum from an out-of-country nursing program to determine if it matches Canadian standards. But Power said they are not currently evaluating any candidates. Meanwhile, Kane said it’s unclear exactly how much such an assessment would cost, but it could range from $650, according to emails Kane provided to CBC News. There are about 8,000 nurses in Canada, according to Lynn Power of the Newfoundland Labrador College of Registered Nurses. (Ben Nelms/CBC) “We’ve had very few applications from nurses trained elsewhere,” Power said, adding that less than 2 per cent of registered nurses in the province are internationally trained. However, Power says nurse practitioners are a small but growing field with about 8,000 licensed in Canada, compared to 400,000 licensed registered nurses in the country. “I’m excited to say that we are working on a new process with Atlantic Canada … to look at developing a solution in Atlantic Canada that we would have [a] pattern that we could see and therefore would standardize it,” Power said. Premier Andrew Furey said the provincial government is also trying to cut red tape for health workers. “We are certainly looking at how to de-bureaucratize the practice of medicine, nursing and allied health professionals,” he said. Read more from CBC Newfoundland and Labrador
