A Breakdown of the NNAS Advisory Report (RN)

Dec 10

Written By

Hi Everyone. I hope you're all doing well and staying safe!

I am currently waiting to hear my 'next steps' from the nursing regulatory body I have applied for. To keep my mind off the waiting, I thought I'd show you what the NNAS RN Advisory report looks like.

For those who don't know, NNAS is the National Nursing Assessment Service. This is a tool used for internationally educated nurses when they are applying to transfer their license from their home country to become a nurse Canada.

Now, to let you know, the NNAS Advisory report explicitly tells you;

'This report does not determine an applicant's eligibility to become registered or licensed in the jurisdiction of application. Regardless of the report content, a regulatory body reserves the right to request additional information pertaining to the findings provided in this report and has the authority to require further testing and assessment, in accordance with the regulatory body's legislation'

What they mention is so very true. The NNAS is just one piece of the puzzle that the regulatory bodies use to make a decision on your application.

I thought my 'comparable' result would allow me to bypass all the additional assessment / schooling etc. I was so very wrong. But, from what I've seen (after extensive forum searching), it really depends on which province you apply for. I of course had to choose what seems to be the toughest regulatory body in Canada (BCCNM, previously BCCNP).

NNAS RN Advisory Report Breakdown

My report was 10 pages in total. My entire employment history was missed out due to incomplete documents. See blog post here for details on my employment history kerfuffle: http://internationalnurseincanada.com/i-got-my-nnas-advisory-report/

The report has 2 parts:

Part A which is the Applicant Data Review. This includes;

A1 - Personal Information
A2 - Nursing Education Overview
A3- Registration / License Overview
A4 - Nursing Practice / Employment

A1 to A4. Please note I have removed my personal information.

Then, we go to Part B;

B1 - RN Education Domain Breakdown
B2 - RN Summary of Technology-Mediated Analysis of Entry to Practice (ETP) Requirements
B3 - RN Summary of Technology-Mediated Analysis of Dimension Requirements

Sorry to go off on a tangent, but I'm going to be totally honest here - I didn't notice before about the 'Technology-Mediated Analysis' in the titles before. This must mean that they just run your transcripts through a system and word-match? I really do wonder why it takes so long...

Anyways, just so you know, the summary sections (B2 and B3) give percentages of each entry to practice requirements. The higher the percentage, the closer to the the minimum Canadian standards your education is deemed to be.

B1 - RN Education Domain Breakdown:

B2 & B3 - RN Entry to Practice Requirements:

I thought I'd let you know what entry to practice requirements (ETP) were included on my NNAS report (there were 5 categories). B2 is an overall summary of the categories, an average percentage. Then B3 is a more detailed breakdown of each ETP category. See images below:

ETP 1 - Professional Responsibily and Accountability
ETP 2 - Knowledge-Based Practice
ETP 3 - Ethical Practice
ETP 4 - Service to the Public
ETP 5 - Self-Regulation

B3: Technology-Mediated Analysis Dimension Requirements

The potential outcomes for your report will either be; comparable, somewhat comparable or not comparable. The explanation of these is on the report as noted below:

As you can see above, I got a comparable result, but still had to go for additional testing (NCAS, similar to an OSCE). I am still waiting on the nursing regulatory bodies decision on what my next steps will be (knowing what transitional education I have to do).

Last Word

As I have mentioned before, I am not sure on how much of a weighting this NNAS report actually has on your decision. So all in all, my advice would be to take your NNAS report with a grain of salt, as the regulatory body is the one that actually makes the decision.

This is said in the last page of the NNAS report:

Let me know in the comments if you would also like to see the Practical Nurse (PN) / Licensed Practical Nurse (LPN) NNAS report too. Also, please share your experiences! I'm hoping we can all help each other in this crazy journey!

Advisory ReportcanadaComparableinternational nurseNNASnot comparablenurseRNSomewhat Comparable