Final yr, because the California hospital the place she labored was appeasing the Trump administration by erasing phrases like “fairness” and “range” from its paperwork, Brandy Frye had seen sufficient.
Frye, an emergency room nurse with 25 years of expertise, felt that ignoring inequality’s position in well being and illness was an affront to the compassionate soul of the nursing career.
“It felt like a step in opposition to the whole lot I consider in,” Frye mentioned. “And I didn’t really feel like I belonged there anymore.”
Now Frye has discovered a brand new place to belong. She is a part of a surge of American nurses and different well being care employees transferring to Canada — particularly, British Columbia — to flee the insurance policies of President Donald Trump. Frye settled in Nanaimo on Vancouver Island, the place the native hospital has employed 20 American nurses in lower than a yr.
“There are such a lot of like-minded individuals on the market,” mentioned Justin Miller, one other American nurse who began at Nanaimo Regional Common Hospital this month. “You aren’t trapped. You don’t have to remain. Well being care employees are welcomed with open arms all over the world.”
Greater than 1,000 U.S.-trained nurses have been permitted to work in British Columbia since April, when the province streamlined its licensing course of for Individuals, then launched an promoting marketing campaign to benefit from the “chaos and uncertainty taking place within the U.S.” Nursing associations in Ontario and Alberta mentioned they too have seen elevated curiosity from American nurses up to now yr.
“A few of them had been residing in concern of the administration, and so they shared a way of reduction when crossing the border,” mentioned Angela Wignall, CEO of Nurses and Nurse Practitioners of British Columbia. “As a Canadian, it’s heartbreaking. And additionally a pleasure to welcome them.”
The Trump administration, for its half, doesn’t appear involved. When requested to remark, the White Home dismissed accounts of nurses transferring to Canada as “anecdotes of people with extreme instances of Trump derangement syndrome.”
This aligns with an article we reported final yr that discovered American medical doctors had been additionally relocating north to get away from the Trump administration. In response to the Medical Council of Canada, greater than 1,200 American medical doctors created accounts on physiciansapply.ca in 2025 — usually step one to getting licensed in Canada — in contrast with solely about 300 in 2024.
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