Nursing groups in the province are calling for the licensing application process for international nurses to be sped up to help deal with staffing shortages that have led to temporary closures of ER’s like the one we just went through in Perth.
The Perth ER re-opened last Sunday after almost three weeks.
The Ontario College of Nurses says a record of nearly 4,000 applications had been processed this year by the end of June — more than double all those processed last year.
But a report in 2020 found there was a backlog of more than 14-thousand-600 licensing applications from internationally-educated nurses.
The groups say expediting the process would go a long way to alleviating some of the staffing pressure, like the one being felt by all hospitals serving Lanark, Leeds, and Grenville.
(With CP Files)
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