Happy summer to all our members. Hope everyone is getting a chance to unwind and rest. In addition to our summer update and June president report, there have been some developments that have occurred since that time and NPAA wanted to ensure members were informed. Recently Bill 30 and 32 have been introduced in government. Bill 30 consists of updates to many of the Health Care Acts already in the health system. There is nothing that directly impacts NP practice that is readily evident. Bill 32 does affect NPs in that we are now no longer excluded from the Labour Relations
Code. This responds to the ALberta Labour Relations Board’s finding that it infringed on NPs’ charter rights by being excluded. This does not address how NP’s will receive representation through the Labour Code at this time. However, we did meet with the Labour Minister on July 13/20 to discuss how we might be our own representative bargaining agent/group. This is a complicated issue and will require more work on our part and with the Labour Minister. We are meeting with our lawyer in the coming week to discuss options and ways forward. Stay tuned for more updates in the coming months.
NPAA is offering support to the Hypertension Call to Action which is focused on older women. Attached is the one page summary of the work for members to review. The detailed summary will be posted to the website. This work has been also supported by CAN, HSF, Hypertension Canada and CNA( one pager). The International Council of Nurses has modernized the definition of nurse practitioner to be: “ A Nurse Practitioner is an Advanced Practice Nurse who integrates clinical skills associated with nursing and
medicine in order to assess, diagnose and manage patients in primary health care (PHC) settings, acute care populations as well as ongoing care for populations with chronic illness (ICN, 2020). The Nurse Practitioner Association of Canada is lobbying in Canada for PNATF, CIHI, CNA, CASN and all schools of nursing and all NP associations to modernize the definition of nurse practitioner to the ICN definition. The board has not discussed or voted on it as yet, but it will be put on the agenda for our board meeting in September. We would like to hear members’ feedback on the new definition and whether it is one NPAA should consider adopting. Please send your feedback to secretary@albertanps.com.
NPAA received an email from CARNA, seeking feedback on the revised Competence Assessment Rules. The link is attached and NPAA would encourage members to provide feedback. Deadline is Aug 31/20. We are also using the rest of the summer to try and complete the revamp on the website so that it is easy to navigate and information is readily available to our members.
Thank-you again for all your support. Look forward to our next update in September.
Regards,
Mary-Elizabeth Cooper
President, NPAA