Filipino Nursing Herald

Over the past weeks, we've received news that a number of nurses have sucessfully left for work in Canada. The employment opportunities, of course, depend so much on their performance in the Canadian Registered Nurse Exam (CRNE). Passing the CRNE is mandatory to get a nursing license in that country. Each province oversees its own nursing application program and each may have its own set of requirements, much like in the U.S. where each state have different licensing requirements. To get an overview of the application process in Canada, you can start at the Web site of the Canadian Nurses Association .

Here's another news story that just supports our earlier post about the strengthened recruitment drive in Alberta, Canada: Alberta fishing for foreign nurses More foreign nurses are expected to flock to Central Alberta after the province pumps $5 million into recruitment efforts. “It’s absolutely excellent. It’s obvious the province has made this a priority and is moving fast on it,” said Karmen Fittes, director of shared services with the David Thompson Health Region. She hopes about 50 of the foreign nurses who respond to the government initiative will end up calling the Red Deer area their home. More than 100 registered nurses are needed across the health region for the workforce of about 2,000 RNs. (Red Deer Advocate)

The Canadian federal government has given Alberta the go-ahead and C$530,000 in funding to fly overseas and recruit foreign nurses. Officials from Alberta will be able to recruit and assess nurses without requiring these nurses to fly to Calgary's Mount Royal College first to take assessment exams, CBC reports . The move is intended to help Ottawa fill thousands of nursing vacancies. The pilot program is expected to save time and money as assessors can now go directly to places that have traditionally supplied nursing manpower and evaluate them in their own countries. During the assessment program, assessors look at the nurses' experience, education, and English skills. If an education upgrade is required of a nurse, classes can be taken that lasts from a few weeks to a year. **Personal Note** This is good news for Philippine nurses who want to try their luck in Canada. We don't know yet when the first assessors from Alberta will come over, but please be alert for potential...

Pulse Health, an Australian firm, is set to open a recruitment and training center in the Philippines with hopes of recruiting over 400 nurses and carers for facilities intended to care for elderly, disabled or recuperating patients in Australia. Read the Business Day report here .

The Canadian Nurses Association says there will be a shortfall of 78,000 nurses by 2011, rising to 113,000 by 2016 in the country, CTV.ca reports .

Despite what we posted last time about Canada, the country is still a land of opportunity for many. In the past weeks, for example, about 90 Filipino nurses have been recruited to work in the Regina Qu'Appelle Health Region, according to the Leader-Post. See story here . Information on the Regina Qu'Appelle Health Region Information on Saskatchewan

Many things about our world bother me. High up on my list is discrimation and racism. Almost everyday, I hear stories of Filipinos being discriminated on just because of our race. Many efforts have been done to resolve this worrisome situation, but a lot more effort is needed to make it go away. I've heard stories about Canada being a land of promises. Some of my relatives have lived there for a long time and some of them have become successful. Yet, the truth about its broken immigration policies and its highly discriminative work environment is truly troublesome. Take this Web site (www.notcanada.com), for example, and see a part of this country's almost hidden identity. Canada's Minister of Citizenship and Immigration, Joe Volpe acknowledges the issue. Read his comments here on W-Five's story . Even Filipino nurses who have years of experience are forced to work in the lowest positions when they go to Canada. I've heard about a nurse director from one of the larg...

Here's good news from the United Arab Emirates. The government is allowing nurses on visit visas to sit for their nursing exam and take on jobs with private hospitals. Read the story here . You must have at least three years work experience before you can work in UAE, but the government is looking to trim this down to two years.

Some 3,000 male Saudi nursing graduates are still waiting for jobs, reports The Arab News. Dr. Obaid Al-Obaid, vice minister for planning and development at the Ministry of Health, claims there is a surplus of male nurses but a shortage of female nurses in the Kingdom. Female nurses comprise 35 percent of all nurses working at government hospitals in the Kingdom while male nurses make up 32 percent. “The number of jobless Saudi male nurses will unfortunately increase by the end of this year to reach 6,000 to 7,000,” said Al-Obaid.

Here's a sad case of a Filipino nurse who was suspended from the hospital he worked for in the U.K. Based on the charges brought against him, it was said he "lacked competence" both in his nursing skills and his English communication skills. I feel sorry for this man and I hope we all get some lessons from his experience. I know a lot of people who've taken up nursing so that they can take advantage of the many opportunities for nurses in other countries, but before you set out for greener pastures, I urge you to try to keep the high standards that Filipino nurses have been known for. Assess yourself, see where you're weak at, and seek ways of improving your skills. Try to get some hospital experience, even if some employers don't require you to get one. There are good training programs out there. If that doesn't work out, do some volunteer work; a couple of these volunteer programs are very good. Do this for yourself so that you'll be more confident ...

A local recruitment firm and its Australian partner are discussing a proposal for the Australian firm to subsidize the cost of deploying Filipino workers Down Under. If this proposal pans out, Filipinos who are recruited to Australia would have less financial burdens to worry about. Read the news here .

Here's great news for Filipino nurses, caregivers and midwives in the UK: the British government has reversed its policy of denying work extensions to non-EU health workers and even raised salaries from €12,500 British pounds (P1.156 million) to €14,600 (P1.351 million) annually. Across the UK, health workers, called carers, working in nursing homes had faced deportation after the UK began denying work extensions to those who come from non-EU countries. This ensued because of a policy, drawn up earlier, that favors workers from EU-member states.

Just got back from a trip, so I haven't been able to update lately. I've got a whole chest-full of new ideas that I plan to write about and I think I just might have the extra time now to write more, so expect better things from this blog. In the meantime, I was surfing the Web for some relevant news that I missed while I was away and here are some of the noteworthy issues that you might also like to look up: Japan-Philippines Economic Partnership Agreement (JPEPA) Sen. Aquilino Pimentel was quoted in the papers this week saying the controversial JPEPA might be ratified by our Senate. This legislation will, among other things, open up work opportunities for Filipino caregivers and nurses in Japan. Initially the number of workers have been limited to 400, but hopefully this would increase in the future. Australia needs nurses Raul V. Hernandez, honorary consul to Melbourne, said Australia would need 10,000 nurses in the next three years. Philippine doctors leaving as nurses Th...

More than a dozen Filipino senior carers in Cambridge in the UK may have to leave the country after the local government has refused to renew their work permits. The refusal comes after the removal of senior carers off the national shortage jobs list. Many of the Filipinos facing deportation have lived in Cambridge for four years. The decision has been appealed, with city MP David Howarth taking on their case.

Headhunters from Canada have reportedly started luring Filipino nurses away from Ireland, where the government refuses to give citizenship status to Filipino immigrants, even to those who have stayed there for over seven years. In the past few weeks, Canadian recruiters have gone on a massive recruitment drive to get as many as 250 Filipino nurses to move to Alberta, where green cards and better wages await them. There are about 10,000 Filipino nurses in Ireland and only a few have been granted citizenship. The Irish government does not recognize educational credentials of the spouses of Filipino nurses and Filipinos pay higher school fees for their children because, without citizenship, they're classified as international students.

Port Louis, the capital of Mauritius (Photo from Wikipedia ) The African Press Agency reports that Mauritius --an island nation off the coast of Africa in the southwest Indian Ocean, about 900 kilometers east of Madagascar--may open its doors to foreign nurses. The island state has been losing nurses to France, which has its own nursing shortage of about 25,000 positions. Mauritians are fluent in French and English is taught in schools, that's why they're being recruited to France.

New Zealand is a beautiful country. Its breathtaking landscape and unpolluted air are only a few of the things to love about this country. I've thought about moving to New Zealand even before I took up nursing and now that I have a higher chance of getting into the country with a nursing degree, the temptation is more intense, especially since there's so much uncertainty regarding the US nursing industry right now. So, when I was asked few days ago what I think about moving to New Zealand, I already had a ready answer. If you want to take out the uncertainty and want to move out in a definite time, New Zealand looks very promising compared to the US, where there's no telling when the retrogression will end. Applications for NZ are pretty much very straightforward--just get all the paperwork done and you've got high chances of landing a nursing job there, especially if you already have some work experience tucked under your belt. (Although experience is not required b...

This is a shoutout for UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. On Tuesday, Ban called on both rich and poor countries to act urgently on pressing problems related to migration. The UN's top official told some 600 delegates at an international migration conference in Brussels to address growing issues such abuse and discrimation of migrants. He also asked richer nations--particularly, Japan, the U.S. and member-nations of the European Union--to create policies that are friendlier to migration, especially of people trying to escape poverty in Africa and Asia. Ban has just become migration's biggest advocate. I'd vote him as President anywhere anytime. The Brussels conference is the first in informal conferences designed to discuss the migration phenomenon. The next conference is planned next year, right here in Manila.

ABS-CBN's Bandila reports that work opportunities for nurses are currently available in Canada, Spain, Australia at New Zealand. We've earlier blogged about opportunities in New Zealand and Australia, but it's also good news to hear about new opportunities for Filipino workers in Canada and Spain. Canada is busy preparing for the 2010 Winter Olympics, that's why they're inviting seasonal workers to help build the infrastructure needed for the Games. Aside from construction workers (heavy equipment operators, welders, painters, etc.), they're also looking for cooks, hotel workers, truck drivers and even people who'd work restaurants and fast food chains. Around 600 nurses are needed in the city of Saskatchewan in Canada. You can get more information on beautiful Saskatchewan here . Aside from caregivers, nurses and engineers are also being invited to apply for jobs in Spain, the Philippines' former colonial master. To qualify for a job in Spain, applican...

Filipinos working overseas, including nurses, sent home a total of $1.2 billion in remittances in April this year alone. That's 32.6% higher compared to the same period last year. The Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas says that overseas Filipino workers have already sent a total of $4.7 billion in the first four months of 2007, or more than 26.1% compared to the same period last year. The government is expecting over $13.5 billion in remittances for the entire year, up from the 2006 total of $12.8 billion. Of the eight million overseas workers, there's an estimated 163,756 Filipino nurses working in various countries all over the world.