The provincial government has injected $3 million into putting more nurse practitioners to work in Nova Scotia.
In one of two funding announcements Friday, Health Minister Randy Delorey said $1.4 million will be spent over two years on a new incentive program that will cover the salaries of up to 10 nurse practitioner students at Dalhousie University.
The Nurse Practitioner Education Incentive will apply to fulltime students in Dalhousie’s twoyear master of nursing nurse practitioner program enrolled in the family, all-ages stream.
Recipients must commit to work in one of eight designated communities for five years, the Department of Health and Wellness said in a news release:
• Town of Digby, plus 50 kilometre radius of surrounding area
• Town of Shelburne, plus 50 kilometre radius of surrounding area
• Cumberland County
• Pictou County
• Cape Breton County
• Inverness County
• Victoria County
• Town of Sheet Harbour, plus 50 kilometre radius of surrounding area Eligible students will receive an expression of interest application and recipients will be selected based on whether they live in or are affiliated with one of the designated communities and are willing to relocate.
An arrangement with Cape Breton University will allow students to complete some program requirements locally, minimizing the need to travel to Halifax.
“This is amazing news,” said registered nurse Chris Browner in an interview Friday from Antigonish where the funding announcement was made.
“It’s really hard to make the decision to go back to school. . . . I already have a great job, I have a dream job that I love,” said the 33-year-old Glace Bay resident who works at
the Cape Breton Regional Hospital in Sydney.
The thought of leaving that job security and that financial security and going back to school can be “terrifying,” he said.
“I think that’s what holds some nurses back, who would probably make fantastic NPs and great contributors to the health-care team. So I think that this type of incentive for myself and for a lot of people it will make things easier, it will make things more accessible.”
The province will also spend $1.6 million over four years on an additional 25 seats in Dalhousie’s nurse practitioner program. Fifteen seats will be added this academic year and 10 will be added in 2019-20.
That will be on top of 15 seats that have been partially funded by the province since 2005, said Gail Tomblin-Murphy, director of the School of Nursing at Dalhousie.
“They’ve upped it over a twoyear period by 25 new seats for nurse practitioners, which we’re incredibly thrilled about, because it’s really getting hard to serve in parts of Nova Scotia, ” Tomblin-Murphy said Friday afternoon.
Nova Scotia Nurses' Union president Janet Hazelton said nurse practitioners offer “untapped potential in clinics, hospitals and long-term care facilities. . . Educating more nurse practitioners, and allowing them to work to their full scope of practice, will go a long way in improving access to care.”
Only registered nurses with at least two years of experience can study to be a nurse practitioner, Hazelton noted in an interview after the announcement.
If they go back to school, they must give up their jobs for two years through a leave of absence and lose their nurse’s salary and benefits. That financial hit has deterred many RNs from making the move so the incentive will address that problem for those accepted into the program, she said.
Hazelton said her union, the Nova Scotia Health Authority and the Health Department have been in talks toward a memorandum of agreement on the incentive for a few months, to determine, for example, which communities would get the incentivized nurse practitioners.
“Nurses will continue to get a paycheque from the health authority as if (they were) working,” she said, “and in the summer when not in school, they will go back to their community and work shifts in the summer, July and August, just like any other nurse in the summer. When they finish the program, they’ll sign a contract that they will commit to five years working for the health authority in the various communities, the hard-to-service areas.”
The College of Registered Nurses of Nova Scotia has licensed 196 people for practice in the province, spokeswoman Jane Wilson said in an email Friday. But she cautioned that doesn’t mean that number are actively practising as some could be on maternity leave, not working as an NP or not working at all.
Nurse practitioners’ additional education and nursing experience enable them to autonomously diagnose and treat illnesses, order and interpret tests, prescribe medications and perform medical procedures, and refer to as well as accept client consultations from other health-care providers, according to the colllege’s website.
The new spending is part of the Health Department’s nursing strategy that aims to ensure Nova Scotia has the right number, mix and distribution of nurses now and in the future, the release said.
“One of our priorities in government is improving primary care access for Nova Scotian and a big part of that is expansion of collaborative care practices,” the health minister said in an interview from Antigonish on Friday.
“We believe this is the right way to practise as teams, bringing different health-care providers together and putting their scope of practices and skills to work to benefit the patients,” Delorey said. “And that means family physicians, the expansion of residency programs to train additional family physicians, and today’s announcement is about nurse practitioners, another set of highly qualified and skilled health-care providers.”
