Collège Boréal’s practical nursing program will be available on all seven campuses starting September 2022.
The two-year program is currently available in Sudbury, Timmins and Toronto.
It will now be also offered in Hearst, Kapuskasing, Nipissing and Windsor.
“Our partners in healthcare made it clear during our consultations that they all desperately needed a bilingual skilled workforce,” the college’s president Daniel Giroux said in a virtual announcement Tuesday.
New teaching approaches made the program available on all Collège Boréal campuses, said the vice-president Lyne Michaud.
The practical courses, labs and work placement will take place face-to-face, while the theory courses will be delivered via Zoom.
“Over the past 10 months, our students have often told us that providing our courses through Zoom makes our programs more accessible,” Michaud said. “Accessibility is a strategic priority for our college and offering the practical nursing program in an alternative mode is a way for us to meet the needs of students.”
Giroux said accessing healthcare professionals in many communities is a major challenge. He also said the pandemic allowed the college to look at innovative ways to continue delivering programs.
"This will be another way to increase the number of students and graduates and access to those professionals once they graduate to our healthcare partners in almost every community in our province of Ontario," he said. "One of the things we've taken out from this pandemic is there are different ways of providing quality education in multiple communities."
College Boreal is also partnering with Simulation Canada to use simulation learning tools such as interactive software.
“This presents another way for our students to develop clinical reasoning, decision making and communication skills,” said Kim Morris, School of Health Sciences dean
