First of all, I am really fascinated by this committee. Maybe I should have chosen this one.
Thank you very much for coming. My background is in entrepreneurship education, but then I happen to have served in a college that had two years of nursing, moving into four years. A lot of students were coming from overseas. A lot of them were immigrants. I have some questions in that area specifically, especially regarding nursing. Coming from B.C., I can only use the B.C. models in my comments and questions.
First of all, regarding nursing education, we heard there is a shortage of nurses, but I also heard that there's a shortage of nursing educators. There could be very complex reasons, and I don't know whether you have looked at that area. Very often funding is one area, but there is also a lack of nurses wishing to go into academia, where they do train nurses and they do research as well. We have a pool of people, a resource of people who really have the experience. I don't know whether your study has even touched on the area of resources in nursing education and the model that could be used to utilize such rich resources. That's question number one.
Question number two is related to foreign-trained medical professionals. It is true that we are losing some of our physicians to overseas, because they offer better working conditions and other things, but at the same time we have an influx of people who really have that training and just need the foreign credential recognition and the extra training. Again going back to the B.C. model, several colleges that have now been upgraded to universities are offering one-year special programs for foreign-trained nurses with a degree. What they're preparing them for is the background in practical areas in the province and the language they need to write the RN exam, the registered nursing exam. Has that even been touched? Dr. Besner, in your studies about nursing, I don't know whether that has been considered as one of the possible solutions to the shortages.
My third question is about mobility. I agree 100% that shortage is a relative term. Even within the same province there's a shortage of physicians or nurses in the north, but in certain areas nurses or other professional practitioners are still waiting for jobs. It is the distribution as well. I don't know whether you have looked at that as part of your research.
I have tons of questions, because I'm new to this committee. I don't know whether I'll be coming back again, but I just wanted to ask.
Thank you.