The RPNRC Mobility and Assessment of Canadian and Internationally Educated Registered Psychiatric Nurses Project was the first of its kind for the profession of Psychiatric Nursing in Canada.

This pan-Canadian initiative aimed to improve the mobility and assessment of Canadian and internationally educated RPNs. Mobility of RPNs outside of western Canada has been a long-standing issue.  Lack of regulation east of Manitoba is a barrier to RPNs who want to move to a province outside western Canada and the territories and continue to practice to their scope of practice and provide the services that they have been educated to provide.

National entry level competencies for RPNs and a Competency to Curriculum Mapping tool were developed and validated as two core activities of the project.

Comprehensive research was undertaken to describe the regulation, education and workforce of the Registered Psychiatric Nurse profession and document the enablers for and barriers to recognition and mobility of the profession. These core activities formed the basis of the context setting and background to the stakeholder roundtables in Halifax, Toronto and Ottawa, aimed at improving the mobility of RPNs as the project’s final core activity.

Common themes emerged from the Eastern Canada Roundtables:…”timing of this initiative is right”……”current mental health and addiction system is not meeting Canadians’ needs”……”there are gaps and challenges in the access and delivery of services”……. And “regulatory frameworks in eastern Canada were a barrier to RPNs”.

Eastern Canada employer representatives commented that they were struggling to meet the mental health needs of clients and that entry level RNs and LPNs were not adequately prepared in mental health, requiring resource intensive orientation and training in mental health by the employers.

The project is complete and the full project report is available online.