Ever since he was young, Biny Munean knew in his bones that he wanted to help people.
Growing up in an agricultural village on the island of Mauritius in the Indian Ocean, Munean came from what he called a “modest” family — his father worked in the sugar factory and his mother in the textile factory — but his parents had big dreams for their son.
“My parents had an ambition that I should be working in the hospital. It kind of got into my blood," he tells BarrieToday.
After completing his studies at college, Munean applied for a nursing program where he continued his training for another four years before beginning his career as a registered nurse (RN) in 2006.
Munean spent 13 years working in his home country, moving between work as an emergency room nurse and a scrub nurse in the operating room as well as on the surgical, medical and cardiac floors. He says he even spent a year as an anaesthetic nurse.
“In my country, we do pretty much everything from hooking IVs, blood transfusions, suturing, fracture reduction … skill-wise, we are well versed with almost everything," he says.
Despite having a successful career, Munean and his wife, who's a teacher, knew they wanted to offer their children a better educational opportunity, telling Village Media that attending university in Mauritius is extremely expensive. Initially, they considered sending their children abroad to study, but ultimately decided to move as a family.
After making that difficult decision, the couple made their way to an immigration agency, where they were told they were exactly the kind of professionals that Canada would welcome with open arms.
“We are bilingual. We speak both English and French fluently. (We were told) we would be a good fit for Canada and would get jobs as soon as we (arrive)," he says.
In 2018, Munean and his family applied to immigrate to Canada, and were feeling positive about their decision to leave the lives they knew behind.
Unfortunately, once they arrived, the reality of what life in Canada looked like was very different from what they’d envisioned.
“It was a shock,” he admits. “We thought jobs would be open for both of us, and it was not the case. We had to do the process of getting our licence. I had to go to the National Nursing Assessment Service (NNAS) and it took me two years.
"I could not get a job even as a PSW (personal support worker) because I had to take a six-month course.”
In order to pay the bills, Munean ultimately had to take a job as a bilingual analyst on the telephone — a frustrating decision, he says, given Canada’s need for nurses during the pandemic.
“I worked for three-and-a-half years on the phone. It was COVID. I knew this country needed nurses. I had 16 years of experience and I could not find a job. I tried everything,” he says. “It was devastating.”
Every time Munean would pick up the phone to make a work call — and wasn’t in the scrubs he had worn with such pride for nearly two decades — he second-guessed his decision to come to Canada.
“I’d (ask), what am I doing in this county? We left everything behind to come here and I was without a job," he says. "I had a job, but it was not the thing that I wanted to do. For 17 years of my life, I had been caring for people and working in the hospital doing double, triple shifts … Coming here there was no job.”
Munean’s struggle isn’t rare. Many internationally trained professionals find themselves having to jump through numerous hoops in order to work in their field in Canada. He says he was initially told that, despite his educational background, and nearly two decades of hands-on experience, simply didn’t measure up.
He was told that in order to work as a nurse in Canada, he would be required to do another four years of schooling, something that simply was beyond his financial capabilities.
“I have two kids, we had rent to pay … it was hard,” says Munean, noting he would also have had to pay 'international fees' to attend school in Canada.
Eventually, the government passed new guidelines that would allow internationally trained nurses to work as “temporary nurses” for two years until they can complete an exam. That was put in place nearly four years after he first arrived in Canada, Munean says.
Thankfully, he says those new guidelines opened up the kind of opportunities he had been dreaming of since before he left Mauritius, and he was recruited by Royal Victoria Regional Health Centre (RVH) in Barrie to work as a member of the nursing float team.
Prior to this change, explained Tammy Coates, manager of the hospital’s nursing resource team, the process was tight and internationally educated nurses would have been required to complete a formal university program — the shortest of which was three years — and which was not only time-consuming but also expensive.
“Desperation … in the Canadian health-care system made us look at some of the systemic racism that has been built into the system for years, where we look and say if you weren’t educated in Canada it doesn’t count,” she tells BarrieToday. “We had to get creative with how we assess people and how we register them to practice.”
'Still very difficult'
A combination of public pressure and political impetus has helped reduce some of the barriers for people like Munean, Coates says.
“We can’t run the health-care system with that way of thinking. Now, the assessment process is unique to the individual in a lot of ways. What we do now is we look at people’s background," she adds. "We do an assessment of what they learned, their experience and then we give them an opportunity to write … a standardized exam that all nurses must pass. It’s still very difficult.”
Despite having been working in Canada for the last few years, Munean says he is still facing challenges, having been forced to find an exam centre in New York State to write his NCLEX exam because Canada will still not recognize his education.
What makes that particularly frustrating, says Coates, is the exam he will write in New York is exactly the same as what is written in Ontario.
“The NCLEX is a standardized, adaptive exam,” she says. “They aren’t granting reciprocity here in Canada, but … Biny has been working at RVH for over a year-and-a-half. He’s a highly successful, skilled nurse. Every manager wants him because of his skills and his ability to work well with people.
"We have let him practise here, but now the system is saying … we are not going to let you write the exam here that would let you continue to do what you’re already doing, so he had to find an alternative," says Coates.
When he passes the test across the border, the College of Nurses will grant him permanent licence to practise in Ontario.
Being so close to the dream he’d envisioned upon first arriving in Canada, Munean tells BarrieToday he’s very proud to finally be donning his scrubs again.
“Every day I go to work, I work with dedication. I do everything that belongs to nursing. I do every course that I can do,” he says. “I am working at every aspect … to be a better nurse every day of my life.”
Despite his dedication and ongoing commitment to bettering himself professionally, he says sometimes a patient may judge a book by its cover instead of its contents.
“Some people see a brown guy coming into the room and you have to make them have faith in you. They will get them when they see how skilled you are and how you care for them," he says.
As for Coates, she's hopeful Canada will continue to reduce the barriers that stop so many internationally trained professionals from pursuing their chosen field here.
“They bring a different perspective. When I met Biny, it was his enthusiasm for the profession. We can teach anybody skills, but we can’t teach them what it means to internalize to be a nurse," she says.
"He demonstrated that he was a dedicated professional that saw value in being a nurse and what that means to people who need us,” Coates adds. “We need to reduce the bureaucracy.”
It’s been a long and often emotional road to get to where he is today, but Munean says it’s all been worth it.
“It was my aim, my ambition, to wear scrubs and go to work at a big hospital in Canada … and I have done that for the last year-and-a-half.”
That said, he also has some advice for internationally trained health-care workers looking to make the move to Canada.
“Do your reading. Try to get your licence first and then come … otherwise it’s not worth it,” Munean says. “I know it’s a lot of bureaucracy, but in my case I had been doing nursing for more than a decade. I know my job.
"Human beings are all the same. We all have red blood in our veins. Instead of looking at papers, (they) should evaluate us on our skills."