Canadian pharmacist practicing in States?

[Jinxapotato]

Hello all,

First of all I am not a pharmacy student or pharmacist so please forgive me if I sound ignorant.... I am asking for a friend who received his PharmD (obtained from University of Montreal, in 2015) degree in Quebec, Canada, who wishes to eventually practice in the US.

I have done a bit of reading online, and it seems very confusing. Some says that he needs to do a 5 years curriculum again in the States, and others says he could just write the licensing exam and do a short internship to be fully licensed.

As such, I was wondering if anyone has any idea on how he should proceed?

Thank you so much for your help.

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[DIPEA]

Two major hurdles for Canadian pharmacists to move south:

1. Residence/Visa: if you are a US PR or citizen, you are good to go. Skip this section.
If you are not, you must go thru either TN or H1B. With H1B policy tightening, the process can get very very difficult. TN is mostly for short, fixed-term employment, but you must secure a job offer to be eligible. The whole process can become very complex and paradoxical due to a combination of licensing and visa. For example: you need a valid visa/residency status to get enough internship hour to qualify for licensing exams and boards in the first place, but without actual pharmacist job offers in hand, you can't qualify for TN/H1B visa. Basically under the current US immigration policies, unless you are already a US citizen/pr or you can find some extraordinarily nice employer who is willing to sponsor/guarantee you a pharmacist job even before you are licensed, it can be very tough to get around this visa issue.

2. Licensing: really depending on states. Some states require more internship hours than others, ie. CA, NY, PA etc, approx ~1500+ hours, before you are allowed to take NAPLEX and jurisprudence exams. A few states are sorta kind to Canadian pharmacists, ie. WA, ~300 hours if FGPEE score is high enough.

Hope it helps

 

[lord999]

Search the forum under my name for other posts on this area (I am dual licensed through the old NAFTA exception between MN and MB though US trained). It'll actually be quite a bit harder for your colleague because Montreal and Laval are treated as French-curriculum schools and do not gain the automatic pass from the language issue that the English-speaking schools and curriculum have (and for the FPGEC qualification, both of those universities are not given the benefit of the doubt for year issues). The PEBC by Dominion law recognizes both curriculums and languages as functionally equal, but the US does not extend that courtesy (and Quebec also does not extend recognition to US-trained pharmacists).

Canada is not subject to the H1B requirements due to NAFTA, you go with the TN visa. In fact, when we hire Canadian faculty, we usually get them in by TN then EB2 then to green card if they intend to stay here (some do, some don't).

 

[Jinxapotato]

Search the forum under my name for other posts on this area (I am dual licensed through the old NAFTA exception between MN and MB though US trained). It'll actually be quite a bit harder for your colleague because Montreal and Laval are treated as French-curriculum schools and do not gain the automatic pass from the language issue that the English-speaking schools and curriculum have (and for the FPGEC qualification, both of those universities are not given the benefit of the doubt for year issues). The PEBC by Dominion law recognizes both curriculums and languages as functionally equal, but the US does not extend that courtesy (and Quebec also does not extend recognition to US-trained pharmacists).

Canada is not subject to the H1B requirements due to NAFTA, you go with the TN visa. In fact, when we hire Canadian faculty, we usually get them in by TN then EB2 then to green card if they intend to stay here (some do, some don't).

Thank you for your reply. Does this mean that my friend will have to do the 5 year curriculum in State (is that same as going through pharmacy school again?!)

 

[lord999]

No, however, it does mean that he/she will have to take the long road to qualify. This issue was explicitly brought up to your friend when entering Montreal about the problems with licensing coming from a French speaking university even for PEBC affairs. Speaking from the American perspective, this Quebecois disintegration sentiment makes life much more difficult for both sides of the Anglophone/Francophone divide in the same government. Even if a university chooses to use a different language, the qualification standards should be universally the same, or you get a situation like Belgium where it's basically two countries under the same civil government.

 

[Jinxapotato]

No, however, it does mean that he/she will have to take the long road to qualify. This issue was explicitly brought up to your friend when entering Montreal about the problems with licensing coming from a French speaking university even for PEBC affairs. Speaking from the American perspective, this Quebecois disintegration sentiment makes life much more difficult for both sides of the Anglophone/Francophone divide in the same government. Even if a university chooses to use a different language, the qualification standards should be universally the same, or you get a situation like Belgium where it's basically two countries under the same civil government.

I wholeheartedly agree...I am from Quebec as well and its "individualism" is driving me nuts. Even when applying for medical residencies, it runs on a separate policy than rest of Canada @.@

As for the long road, does it mean through the internships? However as the poster above brought up, it seems unlikely to get a TN visa for an intern position, while you can't be a pharmacist qualifying for TN without being an intern first...

 

[lord999]

I wholeheartedly agree...I am from Quebec as well and its "individualism" is driving me nuts. Even when applying for medical residencies, it runs on a separate policy than rest of Canada @.@

As for the long road, does it mean through the internships? However as the poster above brought up, it seems unlikely to get a TN visa for an intern position, while you can't be a pharmacist qualifying for TN without being an intern first...

No, the long road includes the transcript evaluations and the language qualification (TOEFL). For Montreal, not a big worry as the credentials people do see Laval and them from time to time. But yeah, TN is probably not going to have a sympathetic policy, this friend should look at one of the border states first. If that's not an option, then it's quite the slog now that we've reversed our positions in NAFTA with respect to borderless qualification. I do not believe that FPGEC is required even now, but I may be wrong.

 

[Pharmacist100k]

Hello all,

First of all I am not a pharmacy student or pharmacist so please forgive me if I sound ignorant.... I am asking for a friend who received his PharmD (obtained from University of Montreal, in 2015) degree in Quebec, Canada, who wishes to eventually practice in the US.

I have done a bit of reading online, and it seems very confusing. Some says that he needs to do a 5 years curriculum again in the States, and others says he could just write the licensing exam and do a short internship to be fully licensed.

As such, I was wondering if anyone has any idea on how he should proceed?

Thank you so much for your help.

Hi dear, did your friend eventually end up moving? I'm in the same boat now and am looking for anyone with experience to kind of show me the ropes.

All the best.

 

[Jinxapotato]

Hi dear, did your friend eventually end up moving? I'm in the same boat now and am looking for anyone with experience to kind of show me the ropes.

All the best.

Hi there! Unfortunately she ultimately decided to not proceed with the moving due to the numerous hurdles that she'll have to go through, so I guess I can't be much of a help here