Page 9 - 2022-23 UHN Nursing Annual Report

9
UHN Collaborating To Hire and
Train Nurses on a Global Scale
To tackle health-care human resources challenges, UHN has
partnered with the Supervised Practice Experience Partnership
(SPEP), a program for internationally educated nurses (IENs).
Since the inception, UHN has supported more than 80 IENs with
supervised work placements.
The SPEP is run by the College of Nurses of Ontario (CNO) and
Ontario Health as an initiative to allow for equal opportunity and
proper training for IENs at hospitals within Toronto Academic
Health Science Network hospitals.
The program provides paid, supervised work placements for
IENs; these internships enable them to become nurses certified
to work in the province. It offers the IEN learners an opportunity
to demonstrate mastery of entry to practice competencies and
expand their perspective of Ontario nursing practice – their final
registration requirement to enter the province’s nursing workforce.
Pictured: Originally from India, Pawanjeet Kaur Gill took part in SPEP and now works at UHN.
Of the nurses that completed a placement at UHN, 78 per cent
were hired as nurses.
UHN continues to support IENs throughout their placement.
“We are dedicated to ensuring that our placements are a
supportive and rich learning environment where IENs can see
themselves grow their careers,” says Karelin Martina, Director of
Practice-Based Education.
“As a next focus in the SPEP program, we are working on
developing a community of practice where IENs completing
their work placements can learn from IENs who have either
completed or soon to complete their placement and are now
working at UHN. We strongly believe in the power of community
and in learning together.”