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CNO shares priorities with Canadian health care
CNO is leading regulatory change in Canada in lockstep with this country’s health system priorities. A recent meeting of federal, provincial and territorial health Ministers outlined key shared priorities, including a national commitment to strengthen nursing health human resources.
“In Ontario, the exciting work at CNO is vital to our shared priorities for the health care system,” said Silvie Crawford, CNO’s Executive Director and CEO. “Ontario is making changes that are making it more efficient than ever to register with CNO – a fundamental step for safe practice in Ontario.”
Positive outcomes from CNO’s work include improving access to safe care by increasing the number of nurses registered to practice. CNO is constantly working to support the system while upholding patient safety.
Nurses are an important part of the health care workforce, and CNO knows that many nurses who are educated outside of Canada have faced barriers to timely registration. That’s why we made regulatory and policy changes to address challenges associated with the registration process for internationally educated nurses (IENs).
In less than two years, the Supervised Practice Experience Partnership has resulted in more than 2,500 new nurses working in Ontario’s system. We launched this innovative new program with Ontario Health to help internationally educated applicants more efficiently meet two of the eight registration requirements.
To further expedite the registration process for internationally educated applicants, CNO’s Council is looking at amending education registration requirements. Additionally, IENs can now meet one of the Registered Nurse registration requirements by passing the NCLEX-RN exam. This year, we registered 3,043 IENs who used this new pathway — up from 1,581 in 2022.
As well, we are actively engaging with other nursing regulators in Canada to make inroads in labour mobility and interjurisdictional registration. By changing policies related to the most significant barriers to timely registration, nurses from other provinces and territories can become registered and practice in Ontario within days.
