julies879 said:
Can someone walk me through the general steps of the process of transferring a BSN RN license from Washington state to British Columbia?
Yes, it's true that it takes a lot of time and money. It's not a license transfer, it's a brand new application for a license and does not take into consideration whether you have a license elsewhere or not.
General steps for your husband:
1) Apply to NNAS--this step is required for every province except Quebec--there is no way around it. It costs $650 USD to apply, plus you will have to pay whatever it costs to obtain copies of all transcripts, syllabi and other documents, and mail them in via courier. NNAS is not very clear about how the assessment is done and therefore it is often unclear to applicants what they need to request their nursing school to send in (note that documents must be sent from the school, signed, sealed, delivered. NNAS will not accept school documents sent in by the applicants themselves). The assessors at NNAS who will assess international nursing education against Canadian standards (who are Americans and not nurses by the way) go through your course syllabi looking for terminology that has been laid out as acceptable/comparable to Canadian nursing terminology. This is why it is very important that you request that your school send in the most detailed course syllabus available. The more the better. Make sure they clearly outline your clinical hours. It seems that this has been a problem for some.
2) Wait for NNAS Advisory Report to be issued. This takes much longer than stated on the website. The report will most likely say "somewhat comparable". There have been many US educated BSN's who received "non-comparable", but as of Sept 2016 there seems to have been a change of heart in some provinces around comparability and I think, although likely on the down-low, NNAS has been asked to lighten up a little. So it seems many US educated BSN's are getting "somewhat comparable" instead of "non-comparable".
3) Once his Advisory Report is issued, he will need to apply to CRNBC (there is a fee involved) and authorize NNAS to send his advisory report to CRNBC (also a smaller fee involved). CRNBC will advise hime of the next steps. I'm not sure what BC does with "somewhat comparable"--whether he will be asked to take a SEC/OSCE exam or what. If it is "non-comparable" he will most likely have to do some kind of exam. This will cost money of course and in most provinces the wait time to do the exam is horrible--there are many people waiting for a spot when a new exam date opens up. So he will need to register as soon as a date opens.
4) Wait for CNRBC to advise as to next steps. They will say that based on this test results he has met the education requirement, or they will ask for more information, or tell him to take courses. This varies from province to province.
5) Once all requirements are met (he won't have to do NCLEX-RN again), he can get licensed.