Dana Lang trained as a nurse in Romania and retrained at York University. She writes her RN exam next month.
Romanian-born nurse on dean's honour roll
May 10, 2008
There are three black backpacks lined up at Dana Lang's door. One is hers and two others belong to her 13- and 8-year-old sons. They have all been going to school.
"This sight boosted my energies," says Lang, who has just completed a York University program designed to upgrade the qualifications of foreign-trained nurses so they can practise in Ontario.
Lang, 38, will write her RN exam next month.
The road for Lang, from her native Romania to nursing in Ontario, was relatively straight.
She married a Romanian-Canadian and left for Canada in 1993. In Romania, she had attended a nursing college and trained in a hospital. She emigrated one month after graduating.
Lang considers herself lucky she was fluent in English and French when she arrived.
As soon as she acquired an Ontario driver's licence, she went to work in a factory. Within a year, she had a baby. In 1996, she took a receptionist's job with a family doctor and stayed with her for 10 years.
"Patients were always telling me to go back to school to become a doctor or nurse," Lang says.
She finally took their advice and enrolled at York.
"It was always in the back of my mind to do something about nursing," she says. "Then, January '06, it became a New Year's resolution."
Lang wrote a letter to the College of Nurses of Ontario and they guided her through the different options. York's program caught her eye and she applied for one of the 45 spots.
Lang was accepted and told she would fly through. And, indeed, she did.
"I did very well. I was on the dean's honour roll," she says.
After passing her RN exam, Lang hopes to become an acute care nurse.
– Donna Jean MacKinnon