Grant: Travel Awards - Institute Community Support

Canadian health care faces a nursing workforce crisis resulting in a lack of adequate staffing, high levels of nurse burnout, and poor patient outcomes. Nurses working in rural and remote communities face additional barriers and inequities related to geography and climate. These nurses also have an expanded scope of practice compared to nurses working in urban areas and often work with limited support. Immunization competency has been identified as a major challenge for rural and remote nurses, including nurses who work in First Nations Communities. Nurses need to be supported in their immunization practice to ensure culturally safe and equitable access to vaccines for First Nations Communities through collaboration and sharing of resources. FNHA and IHA have partnered to provide mentorship and relationship building opportunities for nurses from their respective health authorities working in nearby communities utilizing a Two-Eyed Seeing approach. We have created a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU), workflows, and guidance documents for the pilot, with plans for use across the province between FNHA and all the regional health authorities in the province. Nurses will attend immunization clinics and workshops across HAs as part of a reciprocal relationship. Program evaluation will include interviews with participating nurses and assessment of the number of nurses trained through this program. Expected Outcome: 1. The creation of formal collaborative relationships between nurses in neighboring communities through immunization knowledge sharing. Recommendations and implications for practice: 1. Increased number of trained nurses available to provide immunization programming to their communities. 2. Capacity Building of nurses to provide immunization training to peers. 3. Opportunities for future collaboration between nurses from different health authorities to improve equitable access to culturally safe immunization clinics.