Ontario's first nurse to have prescribing powers is a Northerner
CBC
For years, Cyril Lee Turley and others have been calling on the government to give power to registered nurses to prescribe medication as a way to alleviate the strain on hospitals and community clinics.
"I started following what the Registered Nurses Association of Ontario was doing with their advocacy back in 2015, and in 2017 heard about this RN prescribing type concept," Turley, a registered nurse with Northeastern Manitoulin Family Health Team in Little Current, told the CBC.
So at the end of 2023, when the Ontario government arrived at the decision to allow RNs to prescribe certain medication, Turley was thrilled.
"[I] waited anxiously for that education to come out in January and jumped on board when it was offered through Georgian College."
Now Turley is the first RN in Ontario to receive the authority to prescribe medications.
As healthcare systems across northern Ontario feel the stretch, Turley said the ability for RNs to prescribe certain immunisations and medication has helped change way clinics can work.
"It's really allowing us to be autonomous in that process and reducing some of that wait that the patient had to go through before."
Turley believes that the ability of RNs to prescribe will enhance the patient experience.
"It is going to allow for positive quality patient outcomes, which is why we nurses do what we do."
Turley has been nursing on Manitoulin for nearly 17 years after he started as a registered practical nurse in 2007.
He became registered with the College of Nurses of Ontario (CNO) in 2017, and has now completed the CNO-approved training programs that qualified him to prescribe medications.
"It was actually a really good course. It was holistic in all the different areas that we'll be able to prescribe," Turley said
The course includes about 14 online theory-based modules, which Turley said sums up to about 55 to 65 hours in length.
That is then followed by a practical component overseen by the lead physician at the clinic. Candidates are required to write 20 prescriptions, along with patient care plans and some learning objectives and goals for the College of Nurses.
More than 100 workers at a steel plant in eastern Ontario are being laid off either temporarily or permanently, as a company with facilities in Quebec and Ontario cuts its workforce due to challenging market conditions — including U.S. tariffs.
A small town northwest of Thunder Bay, Ont., has become the unlikely home for hundreds of foreign workers, but many may have to leave the community they've embraced after the end of a federal program put in place to fill gaps in Canada's labour market.
There's mixed reaction in Waterloo to an injuction allowing police to detain, arrest and charge anyone who is participating in unsanctioned street parties in that city this weekend.
Diabetes Canada is excited about Prince Edward Island's new pharmacare deal with the federal government, but hopes the province will reevaluate copays on diabetes supplies, says a senior manager with the organization.
After 26 years of accommodating guests from across the world, Faith Embleton says she and her husband Ken are ready to sell their bed and breakfast.
A group of big-name companies including Google, Meta and Dow have signed a pledge to support tripling the world's nuclear energy capacity by 2050, a signal of the technology's growing resurgence in popularity.
Five years on, Toronto-area doctors and public health officials are looking back at what they've learned since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic — and most agree the early experience will prove useful if the city faces another infectious disease crisis.
City staff would like Londoners to take a good look around their home and ask themselves a direct and possibly difficult question: Could everyone in your family survive at home, without leaving and with no other help, for a full 72 hours?
Liberal Leader Mark Carney will officially become Canada's next prime minister within a few hours, taking the reins as the country barrels toward a general election and continues to fend off verbal and economic attacks from U.S. President Donald Trump.
Recent cyberattacks in Newfoundland and Labrador should have been a wake up call for the federal government about the reality of an increasingly hostile world, says one cybersecurity expert.
A recent CBC News analysis found that Nova Scotia is rapidly losing some of its most affordable apartments, but housing experts say there are ways to prevent that.
Premier Susan Holt is defending her decision to not use electricity exports to Maine as leverage against U.S. tariffs, arguing the move might cause long-term pain for New Brunswickers.
Montreal's St. Patrick's Day parade first started on Saint-Paul Street in 1824, and a couple centuries later, this annual tradition is still going strong.