Bridging Educational Grants in Nursing (BEGIN)
Funded by the Registered Practical Nurses Association of Ontario in partnership with the Ministry of Health and Ministry of Long-term Care.
The Registered Practical Nursing Association of Ontario (WeRPN) has partnered with the Ontario Ministries of Health and Long-Term Care to deliver the Bridging Educational Grant in Nursing (BEGIN) program from 2021 to 2025. The BEGIN program is part of the Ontario Government’s commitment to recruit nurses to the long-term care (LTC) and home and community care (HCC) sectors. BEGIN will provide a holistic support program, including tuition reimbursement, career coaching, workshops, and post-graduate online modules, for Personal Support Workers (PSWs) and Registered Practical Nurses (RPNs) to complete academic nursing programs to bridge to RPNs and Registered Nurses (RNs), respectively. A return of service model will employ greater numbers of nurses in the LTC and HCC sectors, with improved long-term retention in these areas. Ongoing mentorship and connection with the WeRPN will help foster a culture of excellence to make these sectors of choice for the nursing profession into the future.
In this proposed three-year longitudinal research project, we will use a mixed methods approach to data collection which will be co-designed with an advisory group of stakeholders, including BEGIN program students and the Nursing Knowledge Use Advisory Group (NKAG) (described above). Informed by an equality, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) lens, data and stories from key stakeholders will be gathered to address a series of distinct, yet related, research questions. Our assumption is that the program of proposed research will be completed collaboratively with WeRPN, in accordance with our practice and experience working with WeRPN to date. A representative of WeRPN will be invited to join the research team and/or the NKAG, as WeRPN chooses based on available time and staff resources. The overarching research question asks, how has an educational bridging program impacted the Registered Practical Nursing and Registered Nursing workforce within long-term care and home and community care settings in Ontario?
Current Projects
Resiliency on the job as a home care nurse.
Funded by a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) Partnership Engagement Grant
The Registered Practical Nurses Association of Ontario (WeRPN) has engaged our research team to work together to inform decision-making in solving the nursing recruitment-retention problem they have identified for RPN home care nurses (werpn.com). In partnership, our multi-disciplinary research team of academics, clinicians, home care organizations, RPNs and students aim to inform strategies to recruit, retain and revitalize resilience for an engaged RPN workforce within the home care sector.
The specific objectives of the research project to inform decision-making and construction of relevant, RPN-informed resilience resources are to:
Explore the intersectional elements of professional and personal resilience of RPNs working in home care to inform our understanding of their needs through their experiences in home care;
Understand the role of stakeholders (e.g., RPNs, home care organizations, clients, and their family/care partners) in creating a work environment that supports personal and professional resilience of RPNs working in home care; and
Provide the research evidence for our partner (WeRPN) and other stakeholders (e.g., university and college educators, home care organizations, clients and their family/care partners, government) to inform knowledge mobilization, practice strategies and policy that will increase recruitment-retention and resilience of RPNs within the home care sector for great societal benefit and impact.
Building capacity in rehabilitation services.
Funded by a Registered Practical Nurses Association project grant.
Given the increasing prevalence of chronic diseases and the growth of the ageing population, building capacity within interprofessional healthcare teams is essential to meet the demands of the rehabilitation sector. RPNs contribute to rehabilitation goals through extensive bedside contact, engaging patients in basic activities of daily living, and promoting continuous and coordinated care. However, rehabilitation practices by RPNs are not well understood, and their work may be taken for granted, undervalued and/or underutilized. Despite international attention being drawn to rehabilitation nursing as an area of specialization, and the value of nursing in rehabilitation patient outcomes, there is a dearth of research on the roles and experiences of RPNs working in rehabilitation nursing settings. In partnership with the WeRPN through a WeRPN Research Grant, we aimed to explore the role of RPNs in rehabilitation.
The project’s aim is to explore the rehabilitation functions and roles of RPNs who work in inpatient geriatric and stroke rehabilitation units in Ontario, and to map their practices to those outlined in rehabilitation nursing frameworks, particularly the American Association of Rehabilitation Nurses Competency Model for Professional Rehabilitation Nursing (2014), the Royal College of Nursing model in the United Kingdom (2007) and the Australasian Rehabilitation Nursing Competency Standards for Registered Nurses (2003). Our specific objectives are to:
Explore the perceptions of RPNs regarding their roles in geriatric and stroke inpatient rehabilitation.
Examine the perceived rehabilitation roles of RPNs in the context of focus of care, outcomes of care, direct care, continuity of care, mode of care, and context of care.
Map RPNs rehabilitation practices to the American Association of Rehabilitation Nurses (2014) Competency Model for Professional Rehabilitation Nursing, the Royal College of Nursing (2007) model in the United Kingdom, and the Australasian Rehabilitation Nursing Competency Standards for Registered Nurses (2003).
Implementation of a virtual P.I.E.C.E.S™ for long-term care resident care planning.
Funded by a Social Sciences and Humanities (SSHRC) Insight Development Grant (IDG).
This project, situated within two partner LTC homes, investigated a novel virtual intervention of P.I.E.C.E.S.™ (PIECES) for team-based planning of resident care. PIECES (Physical, Intellectual, Emotional health, maximizing individual Capabilities for quality of life, living Environment and Social including a person’s beliefs, culture, and life story) is a systematic shared solution-finding framework created in LTC in Ontario to enable team collaboration (Hung et al., 2016) and communication. PIECES promotes individual resident care planning using three key questions to achieve a shared understanding of the older adult’s complex care needs and build on their remaining strengths: 1) What has changed? 2) What are the risks and possible causes? 3) What actions should be taken? The intervention addresses preparedness, family presence and directly supports RPNs in resident care and LTC leadership. The objectives of this project are to:
Examine lessons learned about enablers and challenges to implementation of a virtual PIECES intervention for resident-centred care planning to prepare, support and guide the health care team (including resident/family/staff) during COVID-19 and/or flu outbreak.
Explore how implementation of a virtual PIECES intervention may help alleviate social isolation for residents, and improve family and team collaboration leading to better outcomes for residents, resilience in RPNs and communication between LTC homes and family.
Support evidence-informed implementation and sustainability of one or more of the six defined promising practice and/or policy interventions within LTC homes.
Build research capacity within the LTC home sector and facilitate interdisciplinary collaborations between the research community and the LTC home sector.
Provide greater understanding about which promising practice interventions and policy options and/or implementation and sustainability approaches are most effective, in which contexts, and why.
Foster knowledge translation and exchange throughout the research process to inform home-level improvement and implementation and sustainability efforts via the LTC+ Acting on Pandemic Learning Together initiative.
Scientifically assess the implementation, adoption, and sustainability of the intervention intended to mitigate the risk and consequences of future outbreaks of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Apply a sex- and gender-based analysis, taking into consideration intersectional perspectives of healthcare workers, residents, and family care partners from diverse backgrounds.
Foster the use of high quality, real-time, actionable evidence by LTC homes and relevant policy makers during and beyond the pandemic to support the development of a rapid learning health system.