The province will invest $1.2 million to begin training 74 additional nurses in communities across Manitoba, Advanced, Education and Literacy Minister Diane McGifford and Health Minister Theresa Oswald announced.
“Our government made a commitment to Manitobans to expand nurse training by 100 seats by 2011 and we have kept our promise,” McGifford said. “Today, our investments will ensure we exceed our initial commitment to help us meet future demand for the nurses who provide first-class care.”
The new 74-seat commitment builds on a 40-seat expansion funded last year and includes:
• a new 12-seat program based at Brandon University, with training offered in Brandon and Winnipeg for licensed practical nurses (LPNs) who wish to obtain their registered psychiatric nurse (RPN) designation;
• an internationally educated nurses (IEN) bridging program at Red River College, which will support 40 IENs in 2009-10 who are working toward becoming registered nurses;
• expansion of northern LPN training by 15 seats by introducing a new program at the University College of the North, consisting of two rotating sites with 20 seats each, to replace a previous
25-seat LPN pilot project; and
• expansion of the University of Manitoba graduate nursing program by seven seats to increase the number of qualified professional instructors.
“Today there are more nurses working in Manitoba than ever before – including 245 more Manitoba nurses in the past year alone – but we must build on our investments to continue this upward trend,” Oswald said.
The ministers noted today’s investment also includes additional funding for academic staff to strengthen the 16-seat Aboriginal nursing cohort ACCESS program at the University of Manitoba.
To meet requirements of the June 2010 Canadian Registered Nurse Exam, graduates of registered nursing (RN) education programs across Canada will face new national requirements for entry-to-practice accreditation. Because the RN diploma program at Red River College (RRC) would need to be extended to three years in order to meet these additional requirements, RRC is developing a new RN education program that would meet the new requirements, continue to offer students an accelerated RN program and expand the number of RN education seats at RRC.
RRC will be submitting a proposal to the Council on Post-Secondary Education (COPSE) to combine its 100-seat RN diploma program and the 108-seat joint RRC-University of Manitoba RN baccalaureate program into a new 223-seat baccalaureate RN program. In addition to providing 15 additional RN education seats, the new RRC degree program will provide nurses with a three-year accelerated alternative to the four-year university bachelor of nursing degree. The proposed program would be launched in September 2010.
“Red River College is proud of the role we’ve played in helping build capacity across Manitoba’s health-care system and we’re happy the province is moving to expand our degree granting authority by supporting a new, larger accelerated nursing program,” said Dr. Jeff Zabudsky, president of Red River College.
Government will also ask COPSE to review a proposal from Collège universitaire de Saint-Boniface to further expand its programming to meet new national competencies and to create a stand-alone francophone RN degree program.
The ministers noted that today’s announcements build on other recent investments in nursing including:
• creating 40 new training seats last year at the University of Manitoba, Red River College and Collège universitaire de Saint-Boniface;
• providing permanent funding for 10 additional joint-baccalaureate nurse training seats, over and above previously announced commitments, at the University College of the North;
• investing an additional $500,000 in the Nurses Recruitment and Retention Fund to expand access to continuing education, staff development and other opportunities that strengthen nurse retention; and
• completing a successful nurse recruitment mission to the Philippines, resulting in dozens of new nurses arriving across the province this spring and summer.
Today’s investments continue to further the goals of the Manitoba Nursing Strategy, first introduced in March 2000. For more information on the province’s nursing strategy, visit www.gov.mb.ca/health/nurses/strategy.html.
There are 2,034 more nurses working in Manitoba today than in 1999, the ministers noted. The number of nurse training seats has nearly doubled in that time.
