Advancing Northern Nursing Education
Accessible nursing education is critical for a stable and effective northern health care system.
The College of Nursing has been working on providing access to nursing education in Northern Saskatchewan for a couple of years, but recently, we have expanded our reach and worked collaboratively with UiT The Arctic University of Norway and the North Eastern Federal University in Siberia to establish the University of the Arctic Thematic Network on Northern Nursing Education.
“By creating a network of institutions providing decentralized/distributed nursing education to northern communities in Norway, Canada, Siberia, Alaska, Iceland and Greenland, we hope to improve the teaching of northern nursing education, share best practices and form a community of students and educators,” said College of Nursing Dean Dr. Lorna Butler. “The goal of the network is to address the accessibility and quality of baccalaureate nursing education in northern regions and bring together students and educators annually to examine and improve the clinical practice of nursing in a northern context.”
Specifically, the network aims to make nursing education accessible in rural and remote areas of the Circumpolar North, where in general, there are areas of high indigenous populations. Indigenous students are more likely to be parents, have significant family commitments and have less funding available for relocation, making it more likely they will pursue a post-secondary education only if it is offered close to their home community. “The new network will evaluate best practices in offering decentralized or distributed nursing education in order to be more accessible to indigenous students and will examine ways in which education can be made contextually and culturally relevant for those communities,” said Butler. “It will also provide indigenous and non-Indigenous Northerners the opportunity to participate in short term, fully funded learning opportunities that typically they don’t have a chance to participate in due to family demands.”
The following nursing programs are participating in the network with an inaugural meeting scheduled for April 2015 in Iceland:
- University of Saskatchewan
- University College of the North
- University of Victoria
- Dalhousie University
- Nunavut Arctic College
- UiT The Arctic University of Norway
- Lapland University of Applied Sciences
- North Eastern Federal University
- University of Iceland
The proposed University of the Arctic Thematic Network on Northern Nursing Education will provide focus on the creation of innovative models for post-secondary education delivery not only in nursing education, but in the health sciences field. Lessons learned from this network will have the ability to be translated to a variety of professional colleges and health science disciplines. In order to fund the network, this collaboration of institutions received just over $270,000 CAD from the Norwegian Centre for International Cooperation in Higher Education (SIU) for matters relevant to the high north. University of Saskatchewan team members include co-lead Dr. Lorna Butler with co-applicants Dr. Heather Exner-Pirot, Dr. Carol Bullin, Dr. Jill Bally, Mark Tomtene, Robin Thurmeier and Emmy Neuls from the International Centre for Northern Governance and Development.