By Tina Novotny
The current crisis in Canadian healthcare has made attracting, registering, integrating, and retaining international healthcare professionals more important than ever. With many hospitals running over capacity, adequate staffing is crucial. Hospitals can create more beds by adding equipment to rooms and wards, but those interventions can’t meet increased patient demand without bedside nurses.
CARE Centre for Internationally Educated Nurses (IENs) has been supporting nurses back into practice for 21 years. CARE Centre is funded by the Government of Ontario, and since 2016, receives funding from Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada to offer a pre-arrival program for nurses to jump-start their registration process. Along with settlement support, language instruction and exam preparation, CARE Centre offers a variety of professional development (PD) programs to help IENs meet the College of Nurses of Ontario’s (CNO) registration requirements, while working closely with employers to bring more nurses on board.
Some hospitals, like Toronto’s Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre, run PD sessions on-site for CARE Centre members, such as a recent “Updating Your Health Assessment Skills” workshop. Kimberly Lawrence, interim Advanced Practice Nurse for Interprofessional Practice, Special Projects at Sunnybrook, says that the workshop focused on supporting IENs to revisit and update their existing head-to-toe assessment, and practice this nursing skill in a supportive learning environment.“We wanted to acknowledge that they’re bringing a lot of experience to our organization, and this is a refresher,” Kimberly says.
One of CARE Centre’s longest running PD programs is Observational Job Shadowing (OJS), which offers IENs the chance to pair with expert nurses, gaining exposure to the Canadian healthcare workplace, choosing their placement from twenty-one employer partners across Ontario. A recent OJS participant noted, “I feel quite lucky that my first OJS was in the ER Department. It gave me the chance to get a glimpse of the healthcare crisis. It made me face the reality of what I’m getting into. I understood why (obtaining my nursing registration) is a long and arduous task; being there to see things firsthand helped me appreciate why the rules are in place because the quality of care given to patients must never be compromised.”
Employers continue to see the value of the OJS program, with North York General Hospital (NYGH) recently joining after a second nurse employee at their hospital was recognized with CARE Centre’s Joan Lesmond IEN of the Year Award. RN Amina Malik, a nurse educator originally from Pakistan, won the award in 2022, which was presented by 2013 award-winner Edsel Mutia, an RN originally from The Philippines who now works at NYGH in a supervisory capacity.
“As IENs, all of us go through our own professional journey and it may get rough, but no matter how difficult and challenging the days may get, IENs should never forget the reason they became a nurse,” said Malik. “IENs and all nurses should never forget the difference they make in the lives of so many people.”
“Our Internationally Educated Nurses program is an extremely important initiative to expand NYGH’s clinical teams,” says Karyn Popovich, President and CEO of North York General Hospital. “Amina is a shining example of someone who is focused on people-centred care and demonstrates North York General’s core values.”
During the COVID-19 pandemic CARE Centre started a Virtual Mentoring program, a popular option, allowing IENs to connect with expert nurses online, particularly valuable for IENs wanting to return to a specialized area of nursing. CARE Centre continues to find solutions to mitigate the considerable timelines of registration requirements while helping employers solve critical nurse staffing shortages. Growing from an earlier project CARE Centre piloted with University Health Network, CARE Centre collaborates with CNO-approved employers for the Supervised Practice Experience Partnership (SPEP), an initiative by the CNO and Ontario Health. Through SPEP, IENs participate in a supervised clinical placement for a minimum of 140 hours, earning income while helping to meet evidence of practice and language proficiency conditions with the CNO. CARE Centre also works with IENs and ready employers to assist IENs in obtaining Temporary Licenses with the CNO so they can return to active practice while completing their full registration requirements.
“There have been really beneficial developments of systemic change during these unfortunately unprecedented times. After the predicted wave of baby boom retirements happened, the pandemic worsened the acute nursing shortage,” said CARE Centre Executive Director Dr. Ruth Lee. “IENs are finally being fully recognized as the valuable health human resource they are. They bring global experience, cultural and language skills and years of nursing expertise to their new jobs in Ontario and across Canada. The wider healthcare system is finally rallying to give them the support and opportunities they deserve. We are grateful to our employer partners in working with our team in integrating IENs.”
Tina Novotny is Case Manager and Communications Lead at the CARE Centre.
