Is Smith taking up nursing after her term?

Nipissing MPP Monique Smith
News Release

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Today, Nipissing MPP Monique Smith joined nurses from the North Bay Regional Health Centre to celebrate Nursing Week. As a participant in the Registered Nurses’ Association of Ontario’s (RNAO) Take Your MPP to Work initiative, MPP Smith shadowed nursing staff in the Emergency Room department this morning.

Overall, the McGuinty government has created over 11,606 new nursing positions in Ontario since taking office in 2003. The breakdown of these new positions is as follows:
• 5,151 nurses in acute care,
• 3,112 nurses in long-term care settings,
• 853 nurses in community settings,
• 2,207 nurses in primary health care, and
• 283 public health nurses.

Ontario is one of the few jurisdictions in the world to guarantee a full-time job opportunity to every nursing graduate. In our uncertain economy, that means something: 10,000 new nursing graduates have been matched to a guaranteed job opportunity through the program.

In Nipissing, local healthcare facilities have hired 67 new nursing student graduates into full-time jobs as of May 2009, which include two at Algonquin Nursing Home, 63 at the North Bay Regional Health Centre, one at VON North Bay, and one at Leisureworld Care Giving Centre-North Bay.

In addition, the total number of full-time nurses in our hospitals has increased. There are now 463 full-time nurses in the North Bay Regional Health Centre, a 26 per cent increase since 2003/2004. Mattawa General Hospital has 24 full-time nurses, a 31 per cent increase since 2003/2004.

The McGuinty government opened Canada’s first nurse practitioner-led clinic in Sudbury, which successfully registered close to 2,000 unattached patients in its first year of operation. North Bay will soon be opening its own nurse practitioner-led clinic on Lakeshore Drive this summer. Our government is committed to opening 25 nurse practitioner-led clinics across the province.

“Nursing Week is an opportunity for all of us to appreciate the extraordinary contribution that nurses make in our society,” said Monique Smith, MPP for Nipissing. “Nurses are the heart and soul of health care. They are often the people with whom we have first contact when we have a health problem. They are very often the people with whom we have the most contact when receiving treatment. Nurses play a critical role in our health care plan. Quite simply, we cannot do it without them.”

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