Nurse practitioner students who agree to work in rural communities after graduating will be eligible for return-of-service grants to fully cover their tuition costs. This announcement was made by Advanced Education and Literacy Minister Erin Selby and Health Minister Theresa Oswald.
“Our government is committed to training more nurse practitioners and ensuring we can recruit them to the communities that need them the most,” said Selby. “The new Nurse Practitioner Education Grant will fully cover the cost of tuition to support nurses who want to become nurse practitioners and work in rural communities across Manitoba.”
Through the new grant, students will be eligible for funding of up to $10,000 to fully cover the cost of tuition in exchange for one year service working as a nurse practitioner in a designated rural community after graduation.
“Nurse practitioners play a vital role in caring for Manitoba families, working in QuickCare clinics, ERs, personal care homes and other facilities,” Oswald said. “Our new and innovative education grant will encourage even more nurse practitioners to work in rural and northern areas to address the health care needs of families throughout the province.”
Applications for the new grants will be available starting this fall, as the expanded nurse practitioner class begins their studies at the University of Manitoba.
“Nurse practitioners are playing a larger role in meeting the health needs of all Manitobans, offering high-quality care in Winnipeg as well as in rural and northern Manitoba,” said Sandra Christie, president of the Nurse Practitioners Association of Manitoba. “The Manitoba government’s new fully funded tuition grant will support more students as they train to become nurse practitioners and help to recruit more nurse practitioners to rural and northern communities across Manitoba.”
Last year, Manitoba saw its nursing workforce grow by 387 nurses and nurse practitioners, bringing the total to 17,652 working across the province this year, an all-time high, according to registration statistics recently released by Manitoba’s independent nursing colleges.
After facing a dramatic loss of nurses in the 1990s, the Manitoba government expanded nurse training and introduced a variety of recruitment and retention grants to help increase the number of nurses working in Manitoba. Oswald noted that this strategy has worked, as there are 3,560 more nurses working in the province today than there were in 1999. During the 1990s, the number of nurses working in Manitoba was reduced by 1,573.
The new Nurse Practitioner Education Grant is part of the Manitoba government’s nursing recruitment and retention plan. In 2011, the Manitoba government committed to hire 2,000 more nurses by 2015 including 1,000 to replace the anticipated retirements during this period and 1,000 new nurses to continue to grow the workforce and put more nurses on the front lines to care for patients.
Two years into the initiative, Oswald and Selby noted the province is on track to meeting this goal, with 1,338 of the 2,000 nurses already hired including 804 nursing retirements that were replaced and a net increase of 534 more nurses over the last two years.
Download a chart illustrating the net gain/net loss of practicing nurses from 1993 to 2012.
