Licensed to practise and pursue a passion

Adriana Ramirez, 31, hails from rural Columbia, near Manizales, where she completed a four-year nursing degree. She also nursed and volunteered in several rural clinics in areas where poverty was rampant.

Ramirez and her father were both politically involved. Her political party helped support her work with the poor, in the form of money for vaccines and basic supplies. Her father, a worker in a huge coffee plantation, got into trouble for his political activism and his efforts to encourage the peasants to vote for change.

The Ramirez family – Adriana's parents and two sisters – flew to Miami in 2002, where they applied for refugee status. The Americans turned them down, so the family headed north, crossed the border into Ontario and were accepted as refugees in August 2004.

The family settled in Fort Erie. Ramirez and her parents started English lessons, while the younger girls were enrolled in a high school. After two years of English lessons, Ramirez began to look for information about a nursing career in Ontario.

In Niagara Region, she couldn't find any information at any agency, so she scoured the Internet and was eventually directed to an 18-month retraining course (leading to a BScN), at Mohawk College in Hamilton in collaboration with McMaster University. In January, after completing this program and passing her RN test, Ramirez received her licence to practise.

Immediately, she landed a job at St. Joseph's Hospital in Hamilton as a general nurse. She says she got her job so quickly because she went in person to the hospital's human resources office, rather than mailing an application.

Ramirez is now in the phrenology (renal) unit.

"I'm very happy,'' she says. "Nursing is my passion."

– Donna Jean MacKinnon