WeRPN’s Five-Step Action Plan for Government Policymakers and Healthcare Leaders
WeRPN's Annual Report: The State of Nursing in Ontario - 2025
In 2025, WeRPN conducted a comprehensive survey to document and benchmark the current state of nursing in Ontario and the challenges and opportunities facing this profession. Over 1,000 RPNs participated from across the province. This annual survey follows previous research conducted in 2024, 2023, 2022, and 2020.
In this report, WeRPN created an action plan – A call to deepen and fast-track change. Below are the 5 steps of this action plan that you support by joining WeRPN as a member.
1. Legislate safe staffing and workload standards:
Set standardized, safe workloads to protect nurses, ensure patient safety and reverse the decline in patient care standards. Where possible, establish legislated nurse-to-patient ratios. Such measures with consistent workloads will reverse the course of deteriorating patient care while ensuring safe workplaces for Ontario’s frontline practical nurses.
2. Ensure harmonized and competitive wage parity across sectors:
Establish fair, competitive, and harmonized compensation levels for RPNs across all sectors, reinforcing the professional value of this profession. Wages must better reflect the growing knowledge, skills, and responsibility that RPNs take on in their roles, aligning seamlessly within Ontario’s overall, integrated healthcare model. Addressing today’s wage disparities will incentivize retention and create a more equitable and professional wage landscape.
3. Establish accountability for safe staffing and patient care:
Ensure organizations make every effort to meet regularly scheduled staffing numbers to course-correct the normalization of staffing shortages. Current norms for RPN workloads and working conditions have eroded dramatically to benchmarks that would have been deemed unacceptable a few years ago. When staffing is inadequate, care is inevitably compromised. WeRPN is calling upon leaders to monitor staffing levels and hold organizations accountable for patient outcomes when safe staffing standards are not met. The accountability for adverse patient outcomes caused by inadequate staffing should fall on those who are responsible for providing adequate staffing.
4. Enhance access to streamlined educational opportunities to support retention:
Expand and streamline access to educational opportunities for nurses seeking to grow and transition in their careers. By offering financial support and increasing the availability of learning spaces, more experienced nurses can be retained within the profession. Accessible, affordable and career-growth-focused education pathways will help to keep skilled nurses both engaged and motivated, promoting the long-term sustainability of the profession.
5. Regulate nursing agencies and reduce overreliance on for-profit models:
Implement regulations for today’s for-profit nursing agencies, including establishing standards for acceptable profit margins. Moreover, reduce the healthcare system’s overreliance on agency staffing by investing in the development of more strategically planned full-time nursing positions. Temporary staffing will always play a role in Ontario’s healthcare system; however, the core of Ontario’s practical nurses mustn’t be vulnerable to market fluctuations and profit-driven practices.