October 31, 2023

CNO shares priorities with Canadian health care

A recent meeting of federal, provincial and territorial health Ministers outlined key shared priorities, including a national commitment to strengthen nursing health human resources.

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.

About CNO

The College of Nurses of Ontario (CNO) is the regulator of the nursing profession in Ontario. It is not a school or a nursing association. CNO acts in the public interest by:

  • assessing qualifications and registering individuals who want to practice nursing in Ontario.
  • setting the practice standards of the profession that nurses in Ontario are expected to meet.
  • promoting nurses' continuing competence through a quality assurance program.
  • holding nurses accountable to those standards by addressing complaints or reports about nursing care.

The College was founded in 1963. By establishing the College, the Ontario government was acknowledging that the nursing profession had the ability to govern itself and put the public's well-being ahead of professional interests.

For the latest information, please see our Nursing Statistics page.

Anyone who wants to use a nursing-related title — Registered Nurse (RN), Registered Practical Nurse (RPN) or Nurse Practitioner (NP) must become a member of CNO.

Frequently Asked Questions

Go to the public Register, Find a Nurse, to conduct a search for the nurse. Contact us if you can't find the person you are looking for.

All public information available about nurses is posted in the public Register, Find a Nurse, which contains profiles of every nurse in Ontario. Publicly available information about nurses include their registration history, business address, and information related to pending disciplinary hearings or past findings.

Unregistered practitioners are people who are seeking employment in nursing or holding themselves out as being able to practice nursing in Ontario, but who are not qualified to do so. They are not registered members of CNO. Only people registered with CNO can use nursing-related titles or perform certain procedures that could cause harm if carried out by a non-registered health professional. CNO takes the issue of unregistered practitioners seriously. See Unregistered Practitioners for more information.

To ensure procedural fairness for both the patient (or client) and the nurse, the Regulated Health Professions Act requires that information gathered during an investigation remain confidential until the matter is referred to the Discipline Committee or Fitness to Practise Committee. CNO will not disclose any information that could identify patients (or clients) or compromise an investigation. See Investigations: A Process Guide for more information.

Information obtained during an investigation will become public if the matter is referred to a disciplinary hearing. If a complaint is not referred to a hearing, no information will be available publicly.

See CNO's hearings schedule, which is updated as hearing dates are confirmed. Hearings at CNO are open to the public and the media. For details on how to attend a hearing, contact the Hearings Administration Team.

A summary of allegations and the disciplinary panel outcomes can be found on the public Register, Find a Nurse. Full decisions and reasons are also available.

Where a disciplinary panel makes a finding of professional misconduct, they have the authority to reprimand a nurse, and suspend or revoke a nurse's registration. Terms, conditions and limitations can also be imposed on a nurse's registration, which restricts their practice for a set period. Nurses can also be required to complete remedial activities, such as reviewing CNO documents and meeting with an expert, before returning to practice.

For detailed information see the Sexual Abuse Prevention section.

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