The University of Alberta is seeing strong results from a three-year campaign to recruit, train and graduate rural and Indigenous students, and create a pipeline of qualified nurses to work in underserved areas.
An average of 271 rural students enrolled over the past three years, and the number of Indigenous students increased by 28 per cent to 100. Opportunities to get hands-on practical training in small-town and rural hospitals increased by 32 per cent.
The focus on rural enrolment comes thanks to a targeted investment of nearly $1.6 million by the Government of Alberta to create 132 new seats for students in the Faculty of Nursing.
“We know there’s a shortage of nurses globally, but the shortage of nurses is even more dire in rural and remote places,” says nursing dean Shannon Scott. “As a dean an aspirational goal is to allow every student to have at least one clinical placement in a rural setting.”
“Rural nursing keeps you involved with people and the community,” says Sean Knorr, a registered nurse who worked as a student nurse in Vegreville before graduating in 2023. “It keeps you active and constantly learning. I feel fulfilled at the end of the day because I feel like I make a difference in people’s lives.”
Knorr, now 25, grew up in St. Albert and loved visiting relatives on their farms near Vegreville and Westlock. He now works as an RN at the Stollery Children’s Hospital and the Westlock Healthcare Centre, and plans to return to full-time rural nursing soon.
Ninety per cent of U of A nursing students have job offers before they graduate and 100 per cent are employed within six months, most as registered nurses within Alberta.
High demand for learning opportunities
Scott says the worldwide nursing shortage is due to a combination of factors including the ongoing retirement of the baby boom generation, burnout during the COVID-19 pandemic and a new generation looking for more work-life balance. She cites a Montreal Economic Institute report showing that 47 per cent of Alberta nurses leave the profession before they are 35.
Despite that, the number of applications for the BSc program in nursing has shot up by 13 per cent since 2021-22, Scott says.
“That’s a testament to the high quality of programming we offer and our rankings as one of the top nursing programs in Canada and the world,” she says. “We need these top trained nurses to run health-care institutions, nursing units, community health centres and faculties of nursing.”
The new money was for student seats in the two-year after-degree BScN program offered in Edmonton, but Scott notes that other opportunities such as the undergraduate Collaborative Program with Red Deer Polytechnic, Keyano College in Fort McMurray and Northwestern Polytechnic and the graduate nurse practitioner program also encourage rural students by allowing them to earn their degrees while living in their home communities.
Hands-on learning experiences for U of A nursing students are available in many smaller communities across northern, central and southern Alberta.
Scott notes that initiatives such as the Transition Year Program for First Nations, Métis and Inuit students, the development of a new course on Indigenous Health in Canada, and partnerships with groups such as the federal First Nations and Inuit Health Branch, the Bent Arrow Traditional Healing Society and Maskwacis Health Services have broadened opportunities for Indigenous nursing students.
Making a community connection
Scott has launched a new initiative to gather more information on where U of A nursing grads end up working and try to better understand what drives their decisions.
Improving rural health care in Canada has been a focus for Scott since she was a teenager on a farm near Neepawa, Man., and her grandfather Don (after whom she has the middle name “Dawn”) was diagnosed with advanced cancer. He had to quit farming so he could travel two hours east for frequent treatments in Winnipeg, where he eventually died.
“He was one of the most influential people in my life, and that experience created the fire in my belly to want to ensure that people from rural communities have access to high-quality care,” remembers Scott, who went on to become Canada Research Chair in Knowledge Translation in Children’s Health for a decade. Scott is also a member of the Women and Children’s Health Research Institute.
It was one patient in particular that got Knorr hooked on rural nursing as a student. Knorr was working in a small hospital when a man was admitted with severe injuries from a motorcycle accident. The patient couldn’t speak or control his limbs. His case seemed hopeless, and Knorr worried he would not survive.
Then, after weeks of care — from Knorr and the man’s wife, who was constantly by his side — Knorr heard the man speak. It was gibberish, Knorr remembers, but day after day the words became clearer. Soon the man was able to move around with the help of a walker, and he was eventually released from hospital.
In an urban setting, Knorr believes the patient would have been moved to a different ward or cared for by different nurses.
“Being able to see his full story was a wonderful thing,” Knorr says. “Rural nursing has a community connection you don’t get in a city hospital. You need to learn more skills, but you also get to learn more skills.”
