Ontario Makes Room For Thousands of Foreign-trained Nurses To Fill Labor Shortage

Recently, Ontario announced that the province made room for a total of 6,000 health care workers to come and work in Ontario by March 31, 2022. About 300 of these foreign-trained nurses will be sent to 50 high-need hospitals within the province. These nurses will take care of patients under supervision while working to get their license in Ontario. To date, there are more than 1,200 internationally educated nurses who have already applied to the College of Nurses Ontario (CNO) and they have also expressed their interest in this initiative made by the province.

Ontario aims to have 6,000 more health workers working in different hospitals within Ontario by the end of March 2022. These health workers include medical students, nursing students, as well as other students in the health care field. Along with the rest of Canada, Ontario province is currently facing a shortage of nurses since before the pandemic happened. When the COVID-19 was declared, the province started emergency programs that helped add more than 6,700 health care professionals to work in long-term care homes as well as in other care settings to help lighten the load on hospitals.

In 2021 Ontario Economic Outlook and Fiscal Review: Build Ontario, it was mentioned that over the next five years, a total of $ 342 million is promised by Ontario that will be placed to recruitment initiative. This said the investment is anticipated to add over 13,000 workers in Ontario’s health care system, this includes more than 5,000 new and up-skilled nurses along with 8,000 personal support workers.