A nurse from India, should expect around how many years of study here ? Any particular web site ?
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Location: in the heart of Mrs Saga
Posted on: 30-11-04 05:00:00
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Deal With Reality or Reality Will Deal With You
Ontario programs match newcomers with professions
Mahnaz Alibeiki knew her nursing skills were needed in Canada but had no idea how she'd get a licence to practise in a Toronto hospital.
The 30-year-old Iranian newcomer had the healing touch; what she needed was some guidance in navigating through "the system" in a new country.
She got it through the CARE for Nurses Project, one of a score of provincially funded career-bridging programs that are helping foreign-trained professionals find a place in the Canadian workforce — a partial answer to growing criticism that Canada demands high skill levels from immigrants but does little to help them integrate.
Since April of last year, Alibeiki has been employed as a registered nurse at Toronto's St. Michael's Hospital, after completing the six-month CARE (Creating Access to Regulated Employment) program.
"I know that patients are patients and nurses are nurses wherever you go, but I doubt if I could have done the job without the extra training," says Alibeiki, who had worked as a registered nurse in Iran for two years before coming to Canada in 2003.
"The program helped me get my foot into the door."
Such career-bridging programs are a godsend to some of the 130,000 immigrants who arrive in Ontario each year, about 70 per cent of whom are qualified professionals and skilled tradespeople.
The province set aside $20 million last year for 19 programs delivered through colleges and universities, enough to help 4,400 nurses, pharmacists, teachers, engineers, midwives, physicians, electricians and millwrights get back into their professions.
Last month, the province said it would create 15 other programs for about 1,400 more professionals, including optometrists, social workers, university professors and teachers. The budget has been increased to $26 million.
The initial results of these initiatives are already evident in the CARE for Nurses program.
Since it began in 2001, more than 470 internationally trained nurses have used it, says program director Dawn Sheppard, and 320 have already been recertified to work in Ontario.
The participants, who are evaluated and advised on the college-bridging courses, have come from 60 countries.
Two-thirds arrived in Canada with more than six years of professional experience in their home countries.
Through partnerships with St. Michael's Hospital, Ryerson University, Centennial College and George Brown College, foreign nurses are channelled into the specific courses they need, from an orientation class on being a nurse in Ontario, to nursing-specific language training that they'll need to pass the College of Nurses of Ontario licensing exam.
Mary Anne Chambers, Ontario's minister of training, colleges and universities, who chairs a cabinet committee that's working on speeding up immigrant integration, admits there has been a lack of effort to match the demand and supply of skills in the immigrant selection and settlement processes.
"We think this is something the federal government should be working with us on at the embassy level."
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