Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions are for the Minister of Health and Social Services and follow up on my Member’s statement. I know we have a lot of hard decisions coming at us with respect to health and social services as the system evolves and becomes more affordable. Clearly, without question, our training programs need to be considered and reviewed as well. I just want to make sure that we’re reviewing them with full knowledge.
As I’ve indicated earlier, the CHN development program, the stats speak for themselves. Things like the NP are a little bit more questionable and I think if we’re going to be reviewing things like the NP program, or, rather, the department’s going to
be reviewing the NP program, we need to make sure that we’re doing it fairly. The intent of the program and what the college is doing is northern training for northern nurses for northern jobs is why we’re running the Nurse Practitioner Program. The college is doing that, there’s no question in my mind. Health and social services on the other side has to employ these nurse practitioners. I’m not sure that is necessarily happening.
My question for the Minister is: what is the Department of Health and Social Services doing, what work are they doing with the nurse practitioner students currently at Aurora College to help them transition into northern employment with us as nurse practitioners? What is the department doing? Have they met with the students? Are they doing grad placement with them? How are they going to ensure that those northern nurses practise nurse practitioner in the Northwest Territories?