Queensway Carleton Hospital and Carleton University Launch New Tech-Forward Nursing Program

News

Special Announcement

Queensway Carleton Hospital and Carleton University are embracing a new era of nursing with the collaborative launch of an innovative education program. The Bachelor of Science in Nursing, set to begin in September 2025, will be the first new nursing program at an Ontario university in 20 years.

With healthcare being such an important topic for all families, this new program is a symbol of hope for the future. While there are many significant challenges facing the healthcare sector—staffing shortages, access to care and an aging population—QCH is working with community partners to create innovative and collaborative solutions that meet the needs of our growing and aging population.

“It’s a really amazing opportunity for our healthcare and academic institutions to come together and build something unique, new and innovative and help to solve an issue and support our community,” said Yvonne Wilson, Vice President of Patient Care and Chief Nurse Executive at QCH and a member of the steering committee behind building a new nursing school.

With 36 years of experience in healthcare, Yvonne addressed the challenges QCH faced emerging from the pandemic, focusing on the nursing shortage — a problem also exacerbated by an aging workforce.

“We had a lot of attrition of nurses during COVID,” said Yvonne. “We talked about how we needed to do things differently from what we had done for so many years. My hope is that this new program inspires more young people to pursue the nursing profession.”

Ontario is currently short 26,000 nurses, according to the Canadian Institute for Health Information, and the gap is expected to grow to 33,000 by 2028. This new program meets a growing need for more resources in the healthcare system.

The Bachelor of Science in Nursing Program will feature a compressed three-year, experiential learning-focused curriculum that will prepare nurses to enter the healthcare sector faster. Developed in partnership with Indigenous practitioners and scholars, the program will challenge the way we approach medicine and thoughtfully incorporate Indigenous ways of knowing and healing into curriculum. By integrating EDI and Indigenous perspectives into programming from the beginning, we will strive to create practitioners who can apply multiple medical models to meet the unique needs of diverse individuals.

The coursework will be delivered in a hybrid format which includes clinical placements at Queensway Carleton Hospital. The curriculum will leverage innovation and technology, using virtual reality and simulation-based training to build a solid theoretical foundation that can be applied to bedside care and critical thinking.

Queensway Carleton Hospital and Carleton University have worked together on conceptualization, curriculum development and clinical practicums ensuring the program keeps technology at the forefront, designing the program to support current and future healthcare providers’ mental health and reflecting the current, on-the-job challenges of nursing in Ontario.

“As a nurse educator familiar with the various current curricular models in place, the opportunity to reconsider how we educate our future nurses is an exciting and long-awaited change,” shared Danielle Manley, former Queensway Carleton Hospital Nurse and the new Director of the Nursing Program at Carleton.

“To have the chance to reshape nursing education in partnership with our community and with students at the center of our model is the chance of a lifetime. The anticipation to welcome the first cohort is palpable as we countdown to the first day.”

If you would like to support nursing at QCH, please consider making a gift towards the purchase of medical devices and equipment used by the nursing team each and every day. These critical devices are essential for training the next generation of nursing professionals.

World-class healthcare at QCH begins with you!