Carleton, Queensway Carleton Hospital launch new nursing program

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Carleton University and the Queensway Carleton Hospital have partnered to open Ontario’s first university-based nursing program in more than 20 years.

The compressed program, which will open in September 2025 with an inaugural class of up to 110 students, will produce graduates with a Bachelor of Science degree in nursing in three years instead of four.

The program was announced by Premier Doug Ford during a visit to Ottawa on Tuesday.

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“As part of the program, nursing students will have a unique opportunity to receive hands-on training at QCH during the course of study, right on site,” Ford said.

Ontario is short by 26,000 nurses and the gap is expected to grow to 33,000 by 2028, according to Canadian Institute for Health Information data.

“Not only is there is need for more nurses, but we also need nurses who can hit the ground running,” said Yvonne Wilson, vice-president of patient care and chief nursing executive at the Queensway Carleton Hospital.

Burnout is a common problem for nurses, and mental health is an important part of the curriculum, said Danielle Manley, the program’s director.

“We want our students to remain in this profession. We want them to be part of the dynamic new approach to health care in Ontario, and we need them to do that in a way that supports their own mental health as well.”

The seed for the program was planted at a networking event at Hub 350 in Kanata North in 2022, when  Wilson met Maria DeRosa, Carleton’s dean of science.

“The pandemic made an already delicate nursing situation even more difficult,” Wilson said. “Some nurses retired early. Some nurses moved to other jobs outside the hospital. Some reduced their hours, and others left the profession entirely.”

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Working throughout the COVID-19 pandemic created exhaustion and burnout for nurses already in the system. New nurses felt overwhelmed, and many left, she said.

Starting a new program allowed the partners to build from the ground up, including giving the nurses the skills needed to keep them in the workforce, Wilson said, ensuring that nurses entering the profession were already trained in mental health and resilience.

“We want to make sure they’re coming out of school prepared. We’re bridging the theory-to-practice gap,” she said. “The more lived experience we give them, the better prepared they are for the workforce. We want to keep every single nurse we turn out in our workforce.”

The program schedule reduces the amount of time students spend on summer break, which compresses the curriculum and allowed them to graduate faster.

Addison Yeomans, a Queensway Carleton nurse, was a member of a focus group of recent graduates who made recommendations for the new program. She said getting clinical experience in the first year had to be a priority.

“It’s so important for future nurses to be able to interact with with patients from the very beginning,” Yeomans said. “Not everyone gets that in their nursing education. It helped me a lot.”

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The focus group also talked about the importance of technology, including simulation labs, where students can practise their skills in a broad range of scenarios in a safe environment.

“I’m so excited to be part of this program because it combines the best elements of the different education models,” Yeomans said.

Meanwhile, Ford reiterated an announcement he made earlier in late October about the province’s plan to introduce legislation that would effectively ban international students from Ontario medical schools.

Ford said he often met people whose children were in medical schools in other countries. 

“Because we have no seats here in Ontario because 18 per cent of the seats are given to people from around the world that come here, take the seats, learn, get the (medical degree) and then they go back home,” Ford said.

“That’s unacceptable. That’s done. That’s going to be finished. We’re going to make sure that 100 per cent of those seats are filled with Canadians and that, within that 100 per cent, 95 per cent have to be Ontarians. We have to spread the five per cent across the country. I couldn’t leave the rest of the country on that, but that’s what we need to do.”

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