Integration difficulties, stress and anxiety, failures. A year and a half after the arrival of the first cohorts, the Quebec program aimed at recruiting 1,000 nurses internationally is experiencing setbacks, according to what has been observed The duty.
While approximately 300 of its students passed the College of Nursing examination Tuesday – the results will be known within a few months -, 737 are still in training or about to start and around fifty have failed or dropped out along the way, according to data from the Ministry of Immigration, Francisation and Integration (MIFI).
Started in the fall of 2022, the program, at a cost of 65 million, did not only have the effect of bringing workers everywhere in the province: it also generated a lot of stress and disappointment among these future caregivers in our network, many of whom say they have been “deceived” by Quebec.
“This is not at all what I expected. There was a lot left unsaid,” lamented Katia, an African nurse still in the program who wants to keep her identity secret so as not to harm her chances. “It wasn’t easy at all. »
About a year ago, this mother arrived in a Quebec region alone with four children, including a baby a few months old. The local aid agency found her an apartment, but she had to furnish it, enroll her children in school and find daycare for her infant. All this within 10 days before the course starts. “It’s an intense program. You have to study, you have to take care of the children… There are a lot of parameters to take into account,” she says.
A speaker, who remains anonymous so as not to harm her organization helping immigrants, which is funded by the MIFI, told Duty having participated in a workshop with students who were “on the verge of tears” and “very angry”. “What I saw was real psychological distress. Not just a culture shock,” she confided.
The step is too high, she thinks. “The students thought they were coming for an upgrade. But they find themselves doing a three-year technique in barely a year. They feel incompetent, cheated. »
Money problems…and housing
Led by the MIFI, in collaboration with the Ministries of Health and Higher Education, the program for nurses qualified outside Canada pays in particular for equivalences, the cost of training ranging from 9 to 12 months, and provides an allowance of $500 per week to participants recruited in French-speaking Africa. ” It is not enough. With the $500, you pay your rent and that’s it,” Katia said.
Food, winter clothing, transportation, daycare… These expenses put additional pressure on the wallet. Some students even resorted to food banks.
“In our second cohort, in Amos, Ville-Marie and La Sarre, they all used them,” confirmed Manon Richard, educational advisor at the Cégep de l’Abitibi-Témiscamingue.
The participants were accompanied, before and during their stay, by reception and integration agents and local partner organizations so that they were made aware of the challenges of the program, the ministry said. Regional committees were also set up.
“Even if we inform them of the cost of living, that doesn’t stop it from being a huge shock when they arrive,” said M.me Richard.
As they are authorized to do so a maximum of 20 hours per week, almost all of the students — 860 out of 1,000, according to the ministry — worked evenings and weekends as beneficiary attendants to make ends meet.
According to Mme Richard, the first challenge is the scarcity and exorbitant cost of housing. “Families are arriving in large numbers. It’s not easy to find an apartment for families with four, five, six children. »
Mame Moussa Sy, general manager of the Maison Internationale de la Rive-Sud, adds that landlords do not want to rent their homes to people who do not have a credit history. “Some said they didn’t want to rent to people from black Africa,” added the man, whose organization supported nearly 40 candidates last fall.
“A colossal thing”
Arriving in Quebec alone with her five children, Emelda Tabot was part of the first cohort of Valleyfield CEGEP, which started in January 2023. “It was a colossal thing. Adapting to the climate, to all the changes we were experiencing. It was, let’s say… a challenge,” explained the Cameroonian, in an interview with Duty.
Although her installation went “very well”, it was during her training that she experienced the greatest challenges.
First, as she is more comfortable in English, studying in French gave her a hard time. The other major challenge: having to learn at high speed a lot of new things that have nothing to do with the tropical diseases treated in his rural hospital. “We don’t have that, at home, beds [mécaniques] which rise when a button is pressed. »
Despite her great motivation, she says she experienced moments of discouragement. “It was stressful. I sometimes felt abandoned, but my coordinator told me: “Don’t give up, we’re here,” says M.me Tabot, who ended up getting a scholarship for his perseverance.
The duty obtained a document compiling all the difficulties encountered and the solutions recommended by the CEGEPs which welcomed the first cohorts. The problems are numerous: organizational difficulty, work overload, stress management problems, difficulty with technology, delays.
CEGEPs responded with a range of measures. In particular, they gave more time for exams, offered workshops on stress management and even hired more teachers. This doesn’t seem to be enough. “Even though they have experience in their country, the students are very surprised. It’s an excessively demanding course for them,” explains Philippe Beauchemin, mobilization agent in Haute-Gaspésie, here I am!.
He cites the example of a student living in his region who is struggling to reconcile everything. “When he comes back from his day of study at CEGEP, he helps his partner with the children and he wakes up at night to study. This man never sleeps. »
Fear of failure
Katia, for her part, said she was stressed by the possibility of failing and being excluded from the program. This has already happened to three of his classmates. “Personally, I didn’t understand that it was eliminatory along the way,” she confided. If you fail, you really lose everything. If I had known, I would have secured my back. I had a career at home, a certain status. »
Being subject to study visa rules, participants must leave the country if they fail or drop out of the training. Unless they obtain an employment contract with a CISSS or CIUSSS to be hired as a beneficiary attendant and they “then take the necessary steps within the framework of the Temporary Foreign Worker Program”, a indicated the Ministry of Immigration. This sometimes requires waiting several months without income.
For Philippe Beauchemin, the program should review the prospects of failure. “We need to take this pressure off students,” he said. As they are financially precarious, this leads them to work more and it means they study less. There is something wrong. »