When nurses flourish, so do patients
Re: “Is bad press reducing interest in a nursing career in Quebec?” (Montreal Gazette, March 13)
The article explores possible causes for a drop in applications to college-level (CEGEP) nursing programs — among them, the difficult working conditions often highlighted by the media.
While we fully recognize the conditions referred to in the article, it should be noted that applications to nursing programs at the university level across the province are on the rise.
At McGill University’s Ingram School of Nursing, the total number of applicants to our undergraduate/ bachelor programs alone for the 2018-19 academic year is 1,270, which is almost five times the number of spaces we have available. In addition to high numbers of applicants to our undergraduate/bachelor programs, applications at the graduate/master and doctoral levels are on the rise, particularly for our nurse practitioner master’s programs, up more than 70 per cent compared to last year.
As for staffing and retention, we have a growing team of academic faculty and researchers, who are educating and mentoring students for careers on the front lines of acute care, public and global health, and advancing nursing science and evidencedbased practice across the continuum of care.
What’s more, the latest Canada-wide statistics provided by the Canadian Institute for Health Information show that in 2016, while there are some decreases in specific areas, overall, more registered nurses are entering the profession than leaving it.
Clearly, bad press is not reducing interest in a nursing career in Quebec, or the rest of Canada.
Providing 90 per cent of health-care services in the world, nurses help families regain their health — emotionally, physically and mentally — by creating conditions for them to heal and flourish. No other health-care professional has such a broad and far-reaching role.
Our society will continue to need nurses, and people will continue to want to be nurses.
The question we need to be asking our government representatives, then, is: How can we improve conditions and ensure healthy and sustainable working environments for nurses in practice?
And we need to be asking nurses — and individuals studying to become nurses — what conditions we can put in place that would enable them to flourish in practice.
When nurses can flourish, so can their colleagues, their inter-professional teams, and their employers — all to the benefit of patients, families and communities.
Anita J. Gagnon, RN, MPH, PhD, associate dean, faculty of medicine and director, Ingram School of Nursing, McGill University; and Josée Bonneau, RN, MScN, faculty lecturer and director, master of science (applied) in nursing program; Madeleine Buck, RN, MScN, associate professor and director, bachelor of science (nursing) program; Elaine Doucette, RN, MScN, assistant professor and director, bachelor of nursing (integrated) program; Susan Drouin, RN, Doctor of Soc. Sci, CHE, associate professor and director, online education initiatives and continuing nursing education; Mélanie LavoieTremblay, RN, PhD, associate professor and associate director, research; Norma Ponzoni, RN, PhD(c), assistant professor and director, nurse practitioner (NP) programs; and Sonia Semenic, RN, PhD, associate professor and director, PhD program, all at the Ingram School of Nursing, McGill University, Montreal.