It39s as if someone told me 39Forget this your calling39

“It's as if someone told me: 'Forget this, your calling'”: Aspiring assistant nurse's application is rejected without explanation

A recent DEP nursing graduate regrets being denied a position in her CISSS without explanation despite the health network experiencing a workforce shortage.

• Also read: “We are at the wall”: The healthcare network is incomplete, thousands of positions are unfilled

“All my colleagues returned to the hospital on January 9th. I'm at home, with no income, wait… While we're looking for caregivers, Tanya Olivier, 27 years old, doesn't understand. They don’t tell me the reason.”

She testifies reluctantly for fear of being “banned” from the network. “But it's as if someone was telling me: 'Forget that, your calling,'” she denounces.

After two years of study, the young woman completed her practical nursing degree last December, she said. She completed her internships at the Haut-Richelieu Hospital, five minutes from her home, without a single problem.

She hoped to run for the CISSS de la Montérégie-Centre for the auxiliary nursing profession (CEPIA). But his application was rejected without explanation.

Because of depression?

She wonders if she had to take a break in 2020 due to depression and didn't see anything else that could overshadow her fall. Ms Olivier had worked as a service assistant for the same CISSS for five months at the height of the pandemic.

“I was waiting to heal myself. Then I started in [des études] which I love and which I succeeded brilliantly […] They don’t even give me a chance,” she continues.

She hopes to hear from other CISSSs about whether they would like to be CEPIA.

She can still take the exam for the Order of Auxiliary Nurses of Quebec next March without a temporary job, but she would like to gain some experience on site first.

If she passes the exam, she will receive her professional license. She could then be hired by a private agency that would send her to fill vacancies within the same CISSS that rejected her, she explains as an example.

“Different”

His father, Éric Olivier, doesn't shy away from it. “It's absurd […] “It’s hard to hire people, but when you do, you deceive them,” he rages.

Martine Lesage from the CISSS de la Montérégie-Centre wrote by email that she could not comment for confidentiality reasons. She adds that the CISSS does not “systematically tell candidates the reasons for rejections,” although it recognizes “the numerous needs that need to be met.”

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