As ON contends with staffing woes in health care, unions call for tuition waivers, seats in PSE

Faced with serious staffing shortages in Ontario’s hospitals, the health minister has given Ontario’s regulatory colleges two weeks to find ways to register more health workers. ON’s directives include developing plans to more quickly register internationally educated professionals, developing supports to upskill internationally trained nurses to Ontario standards, and more. The regulatory colleges have also recently taken steps to speed up the process, including changing language proficiency requirements and creating supervised practice opportunities. Health care unions such as the Ontario Nurses’ Association have remarked that the province’s move to get more international workers into the workforce is helpful, but insufficient without measures such as improving pay by repealing Bill 124, expanding postsecondary spaces in health care disciplines, and offering financial incentives to study and work in the province. CBC (1)| CBC (2) Note: Archived stories may contain dead links or be missing source links.