Dignitaries gather at the announcement at North West College in North Battleford today. (Angela Brown/battlefordsNOW Staff)

By Angela Brown

New training seats

Province announces funding for more psychiatric nursing spots at North West College

May 9, 2024 | 5:00 PM

It was an exciting day at North West College’s Battlefords campus Thursday as new training spots were announced by the province for the college’s Registered Psychiatric Nursing (RPN) program, beginning in the fall for the new school year.

“What we’re seeing today is an addition of eight registered psychiatric nursing training seats at North West College,” Premier Scott Moe said. “This is part of doubling the number of training seats we have here [since the program started].”

Moe said the college is training people in their home community with the hope that when they complete their training “they will be able to stay at home, either in the Battlefords or in a neighbouring community, or an Indigenous community, and offer these services to the people in these communities where they grew or where they choose to work.”

He added it’s important for the province to ensure it offers health care training seats all across Saskatchewan, not only in the two largest cities.

“This is part of our Four-Point Plan, the most ambitious plan in Canada, to recruit health and human resource professionals into our communities and into our health care system,” the premier said. “This is part of a $111 million investment, which includes adding training seats across 18 professional disciplines. About 870 various [health care] training seats are being added to the training seats we already have in our post-secondary institutes.”

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In 2024-2025, the province is investing $51.2 million to support new and ongoing expansion of health-care training across Saskatchewan, with an emphasis on nursing seats.

Eli Ahlquist, North West College President and CEO, confirmed eight new seats are being added to the college’s RPN program and funding is also being carried forward from the previous year to support the college’s Continuing Care Assistant program.

Including the new eight RPN spots the college will have a total of 32 seats for the program going forward.

“This announcement is absolutely imperative,” Ahlquist said. “As we heard, there is a significant shortage of healthcare professionals here in the province. This provides a diversified opportunity for training locations and different spaces to be able to educate nurses that are in high demand and urgently needed, as far as the care they can provide.”

In addition to the 32 RPN seats in total the college will have, it also offers 16 student spots in the undergraduate nursing program, and 60 continuing care assistants. As well, coming in the new school year, 12 students will be starting in the new paramedic program at the college.

In addition to the new training seats at North West College, the province also announced 24 registered nurse seats through the Saskatchewan Collaborative Bachelor of Science in Nursing program delivered jointly by the University of Regina and Saskatchewan Polytechnic; and 16 registered Psychiatric Nurse seats at the Saskatchewan Polytechnic.

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angela.brown@pattisonmedia.com

On X: @battlefordsNOW