College of Nurses of Ontario (CNO)

Nurses and nurse employers: A provincial order under the Emergency Management and Civil Protection Act authorizes health care professionals, including nurses, to provide patient care services outside their regular scope of practice. It also enables hospitals to engage regulated health professionals from out of province. You can read the order here.    https://www.cno.org/en/covid-19/novel-coronavirus/

CNO & Covid-19 :

REASSIGNMENT/REDEPLOYMENT TO OTHER ROLES OR DUTIES    here

• As a nurse, you must ensure you have the knowledge, skill and judgment, and the appropriate authority before performing any activity or procedure.
• If you are deployed to an area that you are not familiar with:
  • Perform activities you are competent to do.
  • Find ways to address your learning needs specific to the new practice setting.
  • Seek role clarity, and discuss your competency and expected responsibilities with your employer.
  • Seek advice, collaborate and support your health care team to uphold safe patient care and work together with other health care experts to improve your patients’ care.
• For more information on orders related to work deployment and staffing, search for “work deployment” under the Ministry of Health resource web page.

COVID-19 update: Standard of care and nurses’ accountabilities 

CNO understands that, more than ever, the health care system and all health care professionals are experiencing challenging and unsettling times. We understand that for nurses these challenges bring a high degree of uncertainty and stress as we experience change in ways we have never felt before.

• You may be concerned about being able to maintain standards of practice, particularly when mobilized to work in other areas, and we want to assure you that the standard of care is always considered in context. The standard of care can evolve with the dynamic nature of the pandemic, including that resources may become scarce or absent.

Working in the health care system during a pandemic requires continual adaptation and adjustment in nursing practice. In this situation, it will be important to make reasonable efforts to comply with any direction from the Chief Medical Officer of Health and your workplace policies and procedures pertaining to COVID-19 management. While CNO will continue to receive complaints and reports during the pandemic, we appreciate that nurses are always doing their best in every situation and we will assess all information with consideration to the circumstances in which nurses are working.

CNO continues to appreciate and applaud your commitment and dedication within this emergent context. We understand you are considering patient needs, public safety, and doing your very best each and every day.