Practice Standards for Critical Care Nursing in Ontario
2018 | Guidelines & Standards
Practice Standards for Critical Care Nursing in Ontario
HHR planning is as an essential factor in the delivery of critical care services.
Designed to create accessible critical care nurse training, ensure the development of quality work environments and ensure a sustainable critical care nursing workforce.
Comprised of nursing leadership the Critical Care Nursing Committee provides critical care unit-level advice to inform provincial strategies including evaluating current health human resource initiatives; advising on related programs and quality improvement initiatives; identifying value-adding health human resource models; and supporting educational and communication strategies.
The Critical Care Workforce Profile collects and analyzes data on the critical care workforce, including nursing and allied health professionals. A biennial report provides comprehensive data on critical care nurse demographics, workforce utilization, and recruitment and retention indicators and allied health resourcing ratios.
The annual Critical Care Nurse Training Fund is an initiative designed to support hospitals with the costs of training adult and paediatric critical care nurses to the provincially recognized critical care nurse training standards for each fiscal year since 2006/2007. Since 2006/07, over 6,000 critical care nurses in the province have received critical care training support. In 2020/2021, the fund was expanded to include neonatal intensive care nurses.
Critical care nursing recruitment and retention continues to be an area of challenge in the critical care system. Current leading practices that have been successful and sustainable to foster healthy working environments have been explored and reviewed below.
Critical care practitioners are reported to be at a particularly high risk of burnout due to the unique job demands present in intensive care unit environments. In July 2020, CCSO expanded the Burnout Survey to include additional questions relating to COVID-19 and its impacts on burnout across critical care units. The intent of the survey was to gain a better understanding of burnout levels within Ontario’s critical care units including the influence of COVID-19 on feelings of burnout.
CCSO has compiled resources and tools have been identified that may be useful for critical care teams. The intent is to offer possible resources to assist individuals, unit managers as well as critical care leaders to support teams in understanding and addressing factors that can contribute to burnout in the critical care system.
Find all our resources and tools in one convenient repository.
Stay up-to-date on upcoming learning and engagement opportunities.
Have a question or want to learn more about CCSO?