In order to meet the growing demand for critical care services, Ontario hospitals need an adequate supply of appropriately trained critical care health care professionals. The Ministry is proceeding with a series of investments to support this requirement, including :

Training More Critical Care Physicians – The Ministry has increased the number of Adult Critical Care Postgraduate Training Program opportunities from 8 to 18 per year.

Critical Care Nurse Training Standards – The Ministry has engaged stakeholders in a process to define adult critical care nurse core competencies and training standards for Ontario. The results of this process are set out in the Final Report of the Critical Care Nurse Training Standards Task Group [PDF] and in the Standards for Critical Care Nursing in Ontario [PDF].

 Helping College and Hospital Programs Meet the Standards – The Ministry conducted a collaborative evaluation of existing college and hospital critical care nurse training programs to assist these institutions in delivering programs that meet the new provincial standards.

 Nursing Workforce Tracking System – The Nursing Health Services Research Unit at McMaster University is in its initial stages of developing a workforce tracking system to help predict required staff retention, training and replacement rates, patient volumes, patient transfer patterns and anticipated service gaps. By developing a Critical Care Nursing Workforce Tracking System, the ministry will be able to determine available critical care nursing resources at the provincial, LHIN and local community level. This will help the ministry, LHINs and hospitals better understand and plan retention and recruitment strategies and will provide the tools to ensure continued patient service provision.