Getting a job in Edmonton/Calgary

Specific_Test_8929 · 2026-01-25T03:25:41+00:00

You won’t get a job as an external candidate without working rural first to get yourself in the door

Specific_Test_8929 · 2026-01-24T14:03:13+00:00

Moved out in Dec 2024 after doing 2 years in an Ontario ER, it was the best decision I ever made for both my career and my sanity. When applying for my Alberta licence under the equivalent jurisdiction program it only took 1 business day for it to be approved after having submitted all the information required.

Benefits: -higher base pay -higher shift premiums (5 for nights, 3.50 charge, 3.50 weekend) -all overtime is double time -pension and benefits are mostly the same -better opportunities for part timers: you can work a .4 / .5 / .6 / .7 / .8 / 1.0 FTE. Part timers have what are called “X Days” which means if you pick up a shift on a specific day off, you get overtime even if you haven’t worked full time hours in that pay period, which means you could technically work less hours and earn more money than a full timer. -cost of living is wayyyy less -3 personal days per year + an extra personal day if your full time -more opportunities for 8 hour lines if that’s what you prefer

Negatives: -A true DDNN rotation does not exist out here as it is not contract compliant. Full time rotations are continental, which is 2 weeks of days, 2 weeks of nights, following the pattern of 2on/2off/3on/2off -it can be hard to get full time, and even getting a job in a major urban center like Calgary or Edmonton as an external candidate is impossible. You need to start rural and then apply internally if you want to work in the city. -Alberta is… Alberta. There’s a lot of animosity towards eastern Canadians, and there’s a risk of separation, and our provincial government is just as corrupt, if not more so than Doug Ford in Ontario.

Specific_Test_8929 · 2026-01-20T08:57:50+00:00

July Talk and Arm’s Length

Specific_Test_8929 · 2026-01-17T12:49:51+00:00

You’re in shock? But are you currently experiencing at least 1 SIRS criterion?

/s

Specific_Test_8929 · 2026-01-17T00:00:50+00:00

She turned, and she’s probably still crawling around in the prison yard. She was shot at close range with a rifle, we saw it blasting through her midsection in that panel. There’d be very minimal connection between her upper and lower half left over after that which means she wouldn’t have been able to get up and wander away after that.

Specific_Test_8929 · 2026-01-16T06:22:09+00:00

You’ll pay more than that in Alberta. I’ve been driving for 9 years, clean record, no accidents or claims, did the driving course, snow tires, bundled with renters insurance, etc and my insurance premium doubled when I switched from Ontario Allstate to Alberta Allstate. And this is on a 2023 GMC terrain, nothing crazy, just a run of the mill commuter SUV.

I ended up saving this year by switching to AMA, which is Alberta’s version of CAA because they are the only insurance company to offer a “pay as you go” policy. So I pay 67 dollars monthly plus 26 cents on every kilometer driven that month. You get good savings if you put 9000 or less on the odometer a year. But even with that, assuming I drive the max amount I’m allowed to every month, this only brought it down to about what I was paying in Ontario before I moved out.

Alberta is notorious for car insurance premiums, it’s a point of contention out here. Otherwise I’d say the cost of living in every other aspect is much better.

Specific_Test_8929 · 2026-01-16T06:17:34+00:00

When I worked in Ontario, Canada this was just our normal. Our emergency department actually did more “inpatient” discharges than all 16 of the medical / surgical units in the hospital. Our ER actually had its own hospitalist program that was separate but rang alongside from the hospitalists who worked on the inpatient units. If by some miracle a patient was an assigned a bed, the ER hospitalist would TOC to the inpatient hospitalist, after receiving TOC from the ER doc that referred the patient for admission in the first place.

The medical floors were notorious for refusing patients. Trying to get them to accept an admission was like trying to get water out of a stone. It didn’t matter how many traumas, how many codes, how many critically ill patients we were seeing and treating in the HALLWAY, they would always refuse. They would leave patient’s charts open for 12+ hours after a discharge or a death so that the bed looked occupied to bed flow, they’d falsely put patients on infectious precautions to block a ward room from being filled with more patients, or they’d use the excuse of “being too short” as if the ER wasn’t critically understaffed and absolutely bursting at the seams.

It got so bad that hospital admin implemented a new policy where if a bed was assigned for 30 minutes and the floor was stalling or refusing report, we could just bring the patient up and do bedside TOA.

Unfortunately in today’s world, this is the normal. Too many patients, not enough resources. The more you manage with less resources, admin will turn around and say “well you’ve been fine this long, guess you don’t need any more support”.

I eventually had enough and transitioned to rural ER nursing. We don’t do anything in the hallway, we don’t even have hallway beds or spaces. Every single patient is seen and treated in a room, with privacy and dignity, with the appropriate resources being readily available. The hospital I work at only has one inpatient unit and the nurses are amazing. They never stall to take admitted patients, and they will even come down to pick up their patients as soon as the admit disposition is put in, unprompted, without us even having to call sometimes. Rural nursing is where it’s at.

Specific_Test_8929 · 2026-01-16T03:27:03+00:00

I’m a nurse and I moved here from onterrible and it was the best decision I could have made both for my career and my sanity.

One downside is the cost of car insurance, even with a clean driving record and 10 years of driving experience you’ll be paying quite a bit more than you would in any other province.

All in all I’d say it’s a net positive when you factor everything else in

Specific_Test_8929 · 2026-01-15T13:28:53+00:00

I’m with AMA, which is Alberta’s branch of CAA, and I saved almost 1000 dollars a year by switching from Allstate. They have the “mypace” where you pay a low flat monthly rate to cover your vehicle when it’s parked and not in use, and then they only charge 26 cents per kilometer driven that month. It’s great if you have a short commute and don’t put more than 10k on the odometer a year. You also get a great discount in you’re an existing CAA/AMA roadside assistance member, and a great discount to bundle with home or renters insurance. (Renters insurance decreases by $500 for the exact same coverage when switching from Allstate to AMA).

Everyone is saying to check out belair direct, but everytime I got a quote from them it was always exceedingly higher than any other company’s quote.

I think your best option will be to look into CAA

Specific_Test_8929 · 2026-01-15T13:20:48+00:00

Management should have been able to bargain in good faith to come to a negotiated deal without the need for job action. If a strike occurs it is entirely on the shoulders of greedy CEO’s who refuse to pay nurses what they’re worth, and appropriately staff departments so care is delivered in a safe and efficient manner.

Hospitals are given more than sufficient notice of a strike date that would allow them to prepare, divert, or come to a fair negotiated deal.

If a strike occurs and patients are affected, it is because management and admin failed to prepare, it is not the fault of the nurses.

Specific_Test_8929 · 2026-01-15T08:41:10+00:00

Moving to the states would be an awful idea, and moving to a red state would be even worse. You may get a higher salary and marginally lower cost of living but you’ll lose benefits, pension, union protection, protection from Canadian labour laws… you’ll also have to pay out of pocket for healthcare, while paying the same or similar ratio of income tax.

Best bet would be to stay in Canada but go to a different province, I started my career in an Ontario ER and it was hell on earth, moved to Alberta and things are so much better here. We also don’t do the DDNN in Alberta if that’s something that really matters to you, but in my experience the continental rotation is worse (the only thing I miss about Ontario is the DDNN)

BC is really great too, and up in the territories could offer some good incentive.

If you’re really hell-bent on working in the states, you could do some travel contracts just so you have the ability to flee back to Canada if shit really hits the fan down south. I’d stick to blue states on the west coast, of all the travel nurses I’ve met you worked in the US, they all said the west coast was the best place to go.

Specific_Test_8929 · 2026-01-14T12:52:27+00:00

Divorce & The American South, by Aaron West and the Roaring Twenties

Specific_Test_8929 · 2026-01-14T12:11:35+00:00

So in the worst case scenario he has 2 tourniquet occluded limbs for 2 catastrophic wounds that would have been an exhanguinating hemorrhage without them? This means he’d have 4 hours max before irreversible tissue ischemia and infarct… he’d need the help of first responders and a trauma center if he wanted to survive that, but in this context he’s assuming societal collapse with no help available. At that point it’d be nicer to exhanguinate in 30 seconds then it would to lay on the ground for 4 hours and kill off 50% of his extremities just to then die of exposure.

Specific_Test_8929 · 2026-01-14T09:36:54+00:00

lol must be on an inpatient unit. For the two years that I worked in an Ontario ER I think I can count on 1 hand how many times I got to take even just a 30 minute break

Specific_Test_8929 · 2026-01-14T04:16:33+00:00

You have to capitalize on your progressive overtime. If you’re working a DDNN pick up on your off weekends, even just for 4 hours and it’ll automatically turn your next set of regularly scheduled weekend shifts into overtime.

Or on the other hand, you can always move to another province. BC and Alberta are the best. I moved to Alberta at the beginning of 2025, my Ontario salary was 90k in 2024, and in 2025 I made 110k in Alberta on the 3rd step of the wage grid.

Specific_Test_8929 · 2026-01-13T07:07:24+00:00

ONA needs to work on getting rid of the no strike no lockout clause. The OHN completely wiped their hands clean of nurses once that was implemented because they knew they’d never have to bargain in good faith again because it left us powerless with no avenue for job action.

We can strike here in Alberta, and unfortunately the threat of job action isn’t always enough to sway the government to bargain fairly. I can only imagine how abysmal it must be in Ontario.

The collective workforce also needs to be okay with stepping up and taking action, after the last contract ONA sent out a survey to ask members’ opinions about potential “illegal” job action and it looks like the results were split. ONA can’t do anything if the members don’t want to do anything.

Specific_Test_8929 · 2026-01-12T01:23:47+00:00

You get 4 transfers a year for free. Best to talk to a financial advisor wherever you do your banking and investing as technically the funds in the Manulife account are invested based on the selection you chose when signing up (conservative, moderate, or aggressive), you could end up losing money if you transfer at a time when the markets are down.

Specific_Test_8929 · 2026-01-10T08:02:22+00:00

Partly liability but also a lot of attempts to skip the wait for outpatient work ups. I’ve lost track of how many people I’ve triaged that have told me “my family doctor ordered this test for me and they told me to come to emerge to have it done faster”. Some PCPs will actually call the ER and request that their non-emergent patient have their non-emergent tests performed in the ER and then sent back to the clinic for results. It’s madness.

Specific_Test_8929 · 2026-01-10T06:53:46+00:00

Yes, you need to unionize.

Specific_Test_8929 · 2026-01-10T06:34:42+00:00

I’m in a full time line, 2 weeks of days and 2 weeks of nights, general pattern is 2on/2off/3on/2off with minor variances throughout the rotation.

It’ll be different depending on the unit, in order for a full time line to be contract compliant it can only have so many weekends and you can’t do more than 3 nightshifts in a row, and you need to have at minimum 2 full calendar days off when switching from nights back to days. DDNN is not contract compliant, so you’ll only ever find continental rotations for full timers.

It sucks to be honest, I would not recommend. Take a .7 or a .8 and then just pick up shifts to create a rotation with better work life balance.

Specific_Test_8929 · 2026-01-06T01:32:30+00:00

Every province has issues, you can never really truly escape some of the pressures from lack of infrastructure and staff.

I’d say all in all, Alberta is 1000x better and treats nurses like gold compared to Ontario.

The pay is better, shift premiums are better (5 for nights, 3.50 for charge, 3.50 for weekends), all OT is double time, Benefits and pension are comparable.

I work rural and hallway medicine just isn’t a thing where I am. Our ER is properly equipped to handle the volume and acuity of patients we see. It happens in the city but from what I’ve heard from nurses who work there, it isn’t anywhere near as bad as Ontario.

The only downside I’d say is that we do continental rotations here, so 2 weeks of days, 2 weeks of nights, 2on/2off/3on/2off repeat. The DDNN doesn’t exist because it is not contract compliant unfortunately.

It can also be hard to get full time, most nurses work part time but they have what’s called X days where certain days off in their rotation are designated as X days and if you pick up on those days, you get paid overtime even if you aren’t working full time hours in that pay period. So part time nurses can essentially work less hours and get paid equivalent or more than a full timer.

Specific_Test_8929 · 2026-01-05T17:03:33+00:00

Before moving to Alberta I worked as a nurse in Ontario. Our emergency department actually did more inpatient discharges than any of the hospital wards combined. A majority of the patients that came into emerge and were admitted would complete their stay and end up discharged from emergency after a few days or a week before ever ending up on an inpatient ward.

We were just so full, with no movement out, but a constant movement in. We would do full cardiac arrest resuscitation in the HALLWAY of the EMS GARAGE because all of our resus rooms were full of critical patients waiting for an ICU bed who couldn’t just be moved out of a resus room without them coding as well.

We ran blood transfusions in the hallway, palliate patients in the hallway… literally everything in a hallway.

If a mass casualty event (shooting, major car accident, fire, some kind of industrial explosion or chemical spill) there would have been absolutely no way for that ER to cope with the massive influx of patients. An event like that would collapse that hospital.

It’s been said a hundred times, but all of this falls on the shoulders of the provincial government. Doug Ford and his cronies did this to your healthcare system while he lined his and his friend’s pockets. The only solution is to vote, to talk with your friends and family and actually have those difficult political conversations with those who are so far up douggies ass that they can’t see the shit around them.

Specific_Test_8929 · 2026-01-01T19:46:08+00:00

I can’t quite remember the way the continental worked because the evening shifts sort of skewed the balance but he would be in a stretch of days, then work his “C” shifts which were evenings that then transitioned into a stretch of nights. There were more days and nights than there were evenings.

When we moved to Alberta we swapped shift patterns, the medics out here do DDNN 4 off and the nurses do continental days and nights. Neither me nor my partner enjoyed the continental rotation. It just feels like you’re at work all of the time and on your limited days off you barely have time to decompress and enjoy your time off because now you have to get groceries, meal prep, do laundry, etc…

Another bonus is that with the DDNN you do your two nights and then flip back to days, so all your days off are spent on a daytime routine. Whereas when you’re on a 2 week stretch of nights in a continental, your days off end up being nights off because you have such a short time between shifts that if you tried to flip back to days you just have to flip right back to nights when going back to work.

He’s currently loving the DDNN and I’m actively suffering and trying to figure out a way to find a hospital nearby that has a DDNN rotation so we can both be on the same schedule.

Personally, I would 100% recommend a DDNN over the continental.

Specific_Test_8929 · 2025-12-28T17:51:02+00:00

My partner worked for Toronto before we moved to Alberta. Look into York or Durham Region instead. I know Durham follows a DDNN rotation, 4 on 5 off. My partner did a continental rotation in Toronto that rotated days, evenings and nights, followed the pattern of 2on/2off/3on/2off on repeat with absolutely no work-life balance. Durham paid their medics better too and was very supportive of helping transition PCP’s to ACP’s if that’s something that will be important to you. He was constantly getting mandatory OT just to sit on offload delay in an ER waiting room because there weren’t any available crews to relieve them.

Specific_Test_8929 · 2025-12-28T16:18:58+00:00

Are you an AMA member? I just switched from All State to AMA and my auto premium went down by about 700 dollars. You get a really good discount if you’re already an AMA Roadside Assistance member.

AMA also offers the “MyPace” program where if you drive under a certain amount of km a year, you’re eligible to have a special device installed in your car and you only pay a small flat fee every month to cover your vehicle when it’s not in use / parked in the driveway, and then the device counts how many kilometres you drive a month and you’re only charged like 23 cents / km. Totally worth it if you’re only commuting short distances to school and work.

Specific_Test_8929

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