View the registration requirements for the College of Nurses of Ontario
Cognition
Students must be able to acquire and retain new information from various sources. Examples include reading and understanding a range of written documents, including anatomical diagrams, digital displays, medication labels, textbooks, articles, and columns of numbers, such as those recorded on flow charts. Students must be able to sustain prolonged attention, concentrate, and focus to complete various academic activities and to work in stressful and distracting practice environments. They must be able to retain information as memory, and apply and transfer information from one situation to another. Other cognitive skills required include: telling time; counting rates such as a pulse; accurately adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing; computing fractions; using a calculator; writing numbers in records; identifying and differentiating sounds related to heart, lung or other body systems; and recognizing abnormal odours.
Information-gathering abilities
Students must be able to participate in learning situations and client interactions for the purposes of gathering and recording information. This information may be gathered in a number of different ways, including but not limited to: observing (using all relevant senses), listening, searching, reading, understanding and synthesizing. Students will learn to gather information through interviewing, auscultating (listening with a stethoscope), palpating, smelling, percussing, and reviewing documents (such as reading charts and electronic documents). In addition, a student must be able to observe and use diagnostic aids and/or instruments directly or in an adaptive form for the purposes of gathering information.
Critical thinking capabilities
Students must be able to use cognitive and information-gathering skills to address the individual needs of patients/clients by noticing, reasoning, interpreting and responding in a safe, caring and appropriate manner. This requires problem-solving and judgment in order to analyze, integrate, synthesize and apply information to the patient/client situation or context. Students must become familiar with clinical models, theoretical nursing frameworks, and scholarly evidence in order to critically appraise these, and interpret and apply them in a specific patient/client context.
Physical/motor skills
To succeed in a nursing program, students must have sufficient fine motor skills, physical endurance, physical strength and mobility to learn and apply the clinical skills required to safely care for clients.
Examples of such physical skills include:
Mobility
- Move within small spaces
- Raise equipment above shoulders
- Bend and reach
- Walk, stand and maintain balance
Fine motor skills
- Manual dexterity to pick up, grasp and manipulate small objects with hands, with and without gloves
- Use a computer
- Perform complex sequences requiring hand/eye coordination, e.g., preparing and giving an injection
Physical endurance
- Correctly sustain repetitive movements (e.g., cardio-pulmonary resuscitation)
- Work for up to 12 hours, with occasional rest times
Physical strength
- Support clients when changing positions, e.g., bed to chair
- Move, push, pull, and/or carry objects, e.g., computers, medication carts, lift machines
- Use upper body strength for cardio-pulmonary resuscitation
Note: These abilities could be demonstrated with or without accommodations, as discussed above.
Resilience
Students must be able to adapt to and manage a range of unexpected, changing, stressful, emotionally charged, and/or ethically challenging situations, for example respiratory arrest, bleeding, patient death or disclosure of abuse. Students must be able to deal with academic requirements by prioritizing activities, effectively managing time, and exercising focus and discipline. Some examples of academic requirements may include: presentations to colleagues, oral examinations, practical examinations, debates and meeting assignment deadlines. Students must be able to receive, reflect on and integrate constructive feedback. Students must be aware of their own emotions and behaviours, and develop the ability to further regulate these in order to focus on required program activities. They must have the ability to recognize their own stress, and consequently develop stress management abilities and self-care strategies, including being able to seek resources and assistance when needed.
Ethics
Students entering a nursing program must care about assisting individuals and their families and communities in achieving their goals, and do so in ways that acknowledge ethical values. The CNO has identified the following values as being most important to providing nursing care in Ontario: client well-being; client choice, privacy and confidentiality; respect for life; maintaining commitments; truthfulness; and fairness. To succeed in nursing, students must demonstrate integrity, sensitivity, compassion and concern for others, including clients, peers, and colleagues with whom they work collaboratively to build trusting relationships. They must be respectful of the individuality and diversity of others, regardless of their background characteristics, such as age, health status, place of origin, race, culture, ethnicity, political or spiritual beliefs, socio-economic status, marital status, occupation, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, lifestyle, mental ability or physical ability.
Communication/interpersonal abilities
The ability to develop mature, sensitive and effective relationships with patients, families and other members of the health-care team is required. This includes the ability to communicate with, and relate to, other people in a caring manner.
Students must have the ability to develop excellent observational, listening, oral and written communication skills, as well as to develop the capacity to sensitively perceive and convey verbal and non-verbal information effectively and efficiently. Students must also be able to develop the ability to coherently summarize the patient/client condition, assessment, and intervention plan, both verbally and in text, in compliance with regulatory and organizational record-keeping standards and privacy and confidentiality legislation and standards.
Examples include:
- Hear, speak, write, and comprehend the principal language or languages of the program
- Learn to understand and respond to patient and colleague perspectives
- Become aware of, and respond to, the body language of oneself and others
- Understand and use clinical terminology
- Learn to document pertinent patient findings in writing or in electronic format
NOTE: various programs in Ontario may have additional, program-specific essential requirements.
Approved by COUPNJanuary 2019
