November 02, 2023

Working with government to support health care

The College of Nurses of Ontario (CNO) is committed to working with our partners in government to support the health care system. This includes collaborating across the system to enhancing timely registration.

The College of Nurses of Ontario (CNO) is committed to working with our partners in government to support the health care system. This includes collaborating across the system to enhancing timely registration.

One way we are doing this is with the Supervised Practice Experience Partnership (SPEP), which we launched with Ontario Health and the Ministry of Health. SPEP helps internationally educated applicants more efficiently meet two of the eight registration requirements by matching them with employers so they can participate in a supervised practice experience.

“SPEP is another regulatory innovation that is helping nurses enter the health care system,” said Silvie Crawford, CNO’s Executive Director and CEO. “That's why we were so pleased to see this important partnership in the government’s recent Fall Economic Statement.”

SPEP supports practice assessment in partnership with nurse employers. Since the program started in 2022, we have matched more than 3,000 applicants with employers, enabling more than 2,500 nurses to register with CNO.

In some of these cases, SPEP provides the opportunity to recruit nurses to remote or rural areas where even one new Registered Nurse or Registered Practical Nurse can make a difference. To date, 170 applicants who said they were willing to relocate have been matched to employers in northern and rural communities.

SPEP is one of a number of CNO initiatives that have resulted in registering increased numbers of nurses, including internationally educated nurses (IENs), to enter the workforce. We persist in finding new and innovative solutions for registering IENs, streamlining registration and addressing current health human workforce challenges.

It's all part of a larger goal of modernizing CNO’s registration processes to help address health human resource needs in the province. We continue to collaborate with government to make regulatory and legislative changes that support timely registration of nurses, whether applicants are educated in Canada or internationally.

“We all have a role to play to support safe patient care. Ours includes registering nurses with the knowledge, skill and judgment to practice safely in Ontario,” Crawford added.

For the most current registration data, visit our self-serve Nursing Data Dashboard.

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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