We are Niagara Health is a series of stories that celebrates the incredible people working and volunteering in our organization and how they make a difference in the lives of patients and coworkers every day.
From more than 13,300 kilometres away in the Bicol Region of the Philippines, Niagara looked like the ideal place to live and work to Barney Zafe.
The area consistently ranked highly in Barney’s online searches for good places to pursue his career as a registered nurse (RN) and achieve the work-life balance that eluded him in his homeland.
In the Philippines, nursing is a popular career, and Barney found himself overworked and underpaid in a saturated job market. He also had two other jobs, as a photographer and at an outsourcing company, to make ends meet.
So in 2019, Barney took a chance on a place 12 time zones away, where he knew no one. He considered moving to the U.S., where his mom is a nurse in Los Angeles, but the political climate there steered him to Canada instead.
“I felt like I was doing something for myself,” he says. “I applied to college, moved here with two bags and started my life here.”
As an internationally educated nurse, Barney enrolled at Niagara College and began studying to take his Canadian licensing exam. His hope was to bring his wife and fellow nurse, Apryll, to Canada once he got established, but the pandemic delayed her arrival by two years.
Still, Niagara quickly felt like home and a place filled with opportunity for an RN with experience in medical-surgical care, the operating room and intensive care unit. He also found his “CanFam” – the Filipino community he became part of here.
“Before I came here, I asked my outsourcing company boss, Joelle Armstrong, if people were nice to immigrants here. That’s probably one of the biggest reasons why I didn’t go to the U.S.,” Barney says. “Coming here as a new immigrant, I was happy to see how diverse it is. I’ve met a lot of Filipinos and other cultures, and I’m learning from them.”
“Coming here as a new immigrant, I was happy to see how diverse it is. I’ve met a lot of Filipinos and other cultures, and I’m learning from them.”
Part of his training to work as an RN in Canada included taking a cultural diversity course at Niagara College. Since joining Niagara Health in 2022, where he works at the Marotta Family Hospital on a surgical/orthopedic unit, Barney says he’s become more self-aware and sensitive to cultural differences.
“That’s very exciting to me to always be learning,” he says.
He’s also achieved the work-life balance that drew him here in the first place. Gone are the days of long commutes to get to shifts that often went into overtime, like in the Philippines. At Niagara Health, Barney works four 12-hour shifts – two days and two nights – followed by enough time off to rest and recuperate before his next rotation.
“In terms of work-life balance, I found that in Canada,” he says.
Apryll, whose pathway to nursing in Canada included completing the Supervised Practice Experience Partnership (SPEP) at Niagara Health, works at a local nursing home.
“We get a lot of support here in terms of being international,” he says. “They offered my wife the chance to train in the community and we thought that was great because it’s more holistic.”
Barney is grateful for the professional development opportunities available at Niagara Health, which enable him to grow his prospects within the organization.
That gratitude also extends to his managers, Caroline Fellows Smith and Carol Munro, his charge nurse Layal Mokbel, and the rest of his unit team for their day-to-day guidance on the job and their trust in his skills.
“They were very helpful in terms of the transition from the Philippines to here,” he says. “They supported me but didn’t baby me because they knew I have experience, and I appreciate that.”
