The regulation of health professions differs across Canadian provinces and territories, often resulting in an unstandardized approach to licensure and registration. These siloed regulatory frameworks hinder health workforce mobility and virtual care – with implications for patient safety and equitable access to healthcare – and pose a barrier to integrated health workforce planning. The authors report on a Best Brains Exchange policy dialogue held in October 2019 on pan-Canadian registration and licensure (
CIHR 2019
), highlighting leading practices and presenting a potential path forward through pan-Canadian regulatory mechanisms. Situating these findings within the context of the COVID-19 pandemic demonstrates the urgency for governments to move on this reform.
The COVID-19 pandemic and its related stresses such as short-staffing, heavy workloads, and burnout are prompting nurses to re-consider institutional employment, bringing a renewed interest in self-employed nursing and its regulation. There is limited research on the regulation of self-employed nursing roles, and published work focuses on nurses’ experiences rather than on regulatory practices themselves. This qualitative case study research aimed to examine the regulation of self-employed nurses by comparing the regulatory policies and processes of nursing regulatory bodies in Ontario, Alberta, and Saskatchewan. The findings demonstrated wide variation in the regulation of self-employed nurses across these jurisdictions. The article includes recommendations to clarify and harmonize the processes used to regulate self-employed nurses.
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