The Ontario government is looking to bring more nurses into the health care system.
They’re investing more than $500 million to educate new nurses and increasing opportunities for current nurses to access specialized training to upskill while on the job. The province is also working with the College of Nurses of Ontario (CNO) to reduce barriers for internationally educated nurses, allowing them to register to work in Ontario faster and start caring for Ontarians sooner.
“Our government continues to build up Ontario’s current and future health care workforce as we add thousands of new nurses across the province,” says Sylvia Jones, Deputy Premier and Minister of Health. “By building on our actions to date to bolster the nursing workforce, we are strengthening health system capacity and ensuring Ontarians continue to have access to timely, high-quality care, where and when they need it.”
To build on the nearly 100,000 new nurses the province has added to the workforce since 2018, the government is investing $510 million over the next three years to give more than 20,000 health care learners the opportunity to work in hospitals and home and community care organizations by the end of 2027.
The Enhanced Extern Program (EEP) helps hospitals hire qualifying nursing, medical, respiratory therapy, paramedic, physiotherapy, and occupational therapy students and internationally educated nurses to work in a hospital in an unregulated capacity, under the supervision of regulated care providers.
The Supervised Practice Experience Partnership (SPEP) program provides internationally educated nurses the opportunity to demonstrate their current nursing knowledge, skill and language proficiency while working to meet the requirements to enter practice as a nurse.
To support nurses who want to maximize their skills and experience, the government is also investing over $1.6 million over the next year to support more than 1,600 registered nurses with up to $1,000 towards tuition costs as they train to prescribe medications for certain conditions, such as contraception, immunizations, smoking cessation, and topical wound care.
Additionally, beginning April 1, 2025, internationally educated nurses will be able to move through the CNO registration process faster. Internationally educated nurses who have a baccalaureate degree and practical nurses who have a diploma will no longer need to go through the lengthy education assessment step in the registration process, saving them up to $7,500 and allowing them to start practicing in Ontario sooner.
