This backgrounder provides an overview of Ontario’s Registered Nurse (RN) workforce, which is broken into Registered Nurses (RNs) in the general class (RN (GC)) and RNs in the extended class (RN (EC)), also known as nurse practitioners or NPs.
Unless otherwise specified, “RN” refers to both classes of RNs. RPNs refer to Registered Practical Nurses, except in national comparisons, when RPN refers to Registered Psychiatric Nurses; Licensed Practical Nurses (LPNs) are the national equivalent of Ontario’s RPNs. Employment figures are snapshots of data from the College of Nurses of Ontario (CNO) taken at registration renewal time, which takes place over several months around January 1 each year.
Please note that cross-Canada comparisons are performed using the latest data from the Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI), which give slightly different figures for Ontario than CNO data (see notes at the end of the document). Data in this backgrounder are the latest available as of January 31, 2014.
CNO data runs to 2013 and CIHI data to 2012.