December 3, 2020 — What is the role of a nurse practitioner (NP) and how does it vary across Canada’s provinces and territories?
NPs are key contributors to the safe delivery of care across our health systems. They integrate clinical skills associated with nursing and medicine to assess, diagnose and manage patients in a variety of health care settings. Understanding their roles and the types of care they can provide is important for effective health workforce planning.
Use our data table and visualization to learn more about the scopes of practice for NPs across the country.
Note: Data for these products was collected in partnership with the Nurse Practitioner Association of Canada. It reflects the most recent information available as of March 2020 before the COVID-19 pandemic.
Key findings
- There is notable variation in scopes of practice for NPs across Canada’s provinces and territories; differences exist in 30 of the 38 identified activities.
- For example, NPs possess full hospital privileges in Ontario, Manitoba, British Columbia, the Northwest Territories and Nunavut, allowing them to admit, treat and/or discharge hospital patients; these activities are out of scope in Quebec and restricted in the remaining provinces.
- The recent pandemic has highlighted the importance of collecting scope of practice data to better support policy initiatives such as workforce migration to respond to capacity needs.
Featured materials
Infographic
See a shareable summary of NP scopes of practice for Canada’s provinces and territories, including independent therapeutic management, pharmacotherapy, interventions and more.
Data table
This data table contains more detailed information on NP scopes of practice across Canada. Analysts and researchers can manipulate and analyze raw data by jurisdiction and scope of practice.