B.C. earmarks $12M to help international nurses get licensed faster

B.C. has announced $12 million to help internationally-educated nurses start working in the province faster, in an effort to increase staffing in the health-care system.

The new system, announced Tuesday, will kick-in sometime this May and include bursaries for 1,500 nurses of up to $16,000 to help pay for the national and provincial assessments required to be licensed. Nurses will also be able to apply for multiple positions at the same time instead of previously one by one.

Health Minister Adrian Dix says the current application process for international nurses is lengthy, expensive, and can take up two years or longer.

“We’ve lived now through a couple years of the pandemic. How central to every aspect of health care and community life nurses are, their value has been demonstrated all the time, every year and every day,” Diz said. “We are so proud of the work they’ve done, and you know and I know that we need more nurses now, we need more in five years, we need more in ten years.”

Dix says this new system will speed up the application process for international nurses considerably.

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B.C. Nurses’ Union (BCNU) President, Aman Grewal says her union has long called for improvements to the assessment and licensing process. Grewal believes nurses who are trained outside of Canada bring valuable skills to the health-care system.

“We are talking of nurses trained in countries such as the U.K, Australia, the USA, Ireland, India, and the Philippines, to name just a few who have had to go through this process as well,” she said. “They are critically needed to fill vacant lines and understaffed units that exists throughout numerous health authorities here in BC. We are in desperate need of more staff, and these internationally educated nurses are one immediate solution to the nursing shortage.”

Historically, B.C. has had fewer nurses than other provinces on average, according to Dix. But, from 2017 to 2020 the number of registered nurses has increased by six per cent.

Back in February, the province said it would be adding 602 new nursing seats to public post-secondary institutions to address the growing staffing crisis.

More than $9 million of $12 million announced will be funneled into bursaries while over $1 million will be directed to streamline the regulatory assessment process.

The funding will come from the $96 million committed from last year’s budget plan to expand post-secondary education and training positions for health-care professionals.