The Ontario government announced today that upcoming regulation changes will expand the scope of practice for nurse practitioners and registered nurses to order more tests and provide additional services in a variety of settings including hospitals, interprofessional primary care teams and long-term care homes.
“Ontario is proud to be home to world-class health care professionals and our government continues to make innovative changes to allow them to work to the full extent of their expertise and training,” said Sylvia Jones, Deputy Premier and Minister of Health. “Expanding the roles of highly skilled nurse practitioners and registered nurses is another step our government is taking to provide more people with the right care, in the right place.”
According to the province, scope of practice changes will improve access to care, especially for Indigenous communities and those living in rural, northern and remote areas of the province. Starting July 1, 2025, nurse practitioners will be able to:
- Order and apply a defibrillator to provide faster care to someone in cardiac arrest.
- Order and apply a cardiac pacemaker to make it faster for people to receive care if their heart isn’t beating regularly.
- Order and perform electrocoagulation, a process to treat skin conditions and lesions, such as skin tags, helping people get them removed sooner.
- Certify a death in more circumstances, improving the end-of-life experience for families after the death of a loved one.
Additionally, these scope of practice changes will allow registered nurses to certify a death when the death is expected, helping ensure death registration is completed in a more timely manner while preserving dignity of the deceased for their family.
“Expanding scope of practice for nurse practitioners and registered nurses builds on the government’s over $500 million investment to bring more nurses into the healthcare system by educating new nurses, increasing opportunities for current nurses to access specialized training to upskill while on the job and reducing barriers for internationally educated nurses, allowing them to register to work in Ontario faster and start caring for Ontarians sooner,” noted a release issued today, November 28, 2024.
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