Some of it happened, and where it happened the evidence shows that the nurses stepped up to it in a comparable way to physicians and others, if you look at the nurse practitioners movement, the investment that Ontario has made around nurse-led clinics, and so on. And in acute care, nurse practitioners work in collaboration with specialists, which allows a much faster flow of patients.
A couple of provinces are currently looking at prescribing. Nurse practitioners in primary care have prescriptive authorities, but not in the acute care settings. There are further discussions around nurses being able to discharge in acute care.
There's a lot more that nurses can do, and the research is there. It's being bogged down by provincial policies, and we could benefit from federal leadership. If we plan in a pan-Canadian way, across the country, we can go much faster than going one-off.