TRU sees high interest in Nurse Practitioner program — with good potential grads will stay local

KAMLOOPS — It’s been one year since Thompson Rivers University (TRU) launched its Masters of Nursing-Nurse Practitioner program (MN-NP). The degree course has 15 seats, which were quickly filled, with hundreds of people applying for the next round.

The goal was to expand nursing education options and to help increase the amount of nurse practitioners (NPs) in the region. TRU’s Dean of Nursing, Dr. Rani Srivastava, says interest in the program is high, and there’s a good chance students will want to start their careers in the local area after graduating.

“I mean, the system is saying, ‘Get nurses, get nurse practitioners out there sooner, faster, more,’” she explains.

After launching in 2023, Associate Professor Dr. Tracy Christianson says the MN-NP program hit the ground running.

“The interest is crazy over the top. We just closed our applications. We’ve had nearly 200 applications for those 15 seats,” says Christianson, “so they have been impressive. There’s definitely an interest and there’s definitely a demand.”

Srivastava says some of that interest came from the university’s existing student body.

“We had a number of students who either started off in the Masters of Nursing program knowing that NP would be coming,” she said.

Given the ongoing healthcare strain in Canada, TRU says it had a lot of support from both Interior Health and Kamloops to bring in the program. Nurse practitioner degrees offer a wider skill set, and NPs are also able to order diagnostic tests.

“They’ll be doing suturing, they’ll be doing ultrasounds, and they can order more tests, so they’re able to kind of go deeper than if you don’t have the NP credentials,” explains Srivastava.

Once the initial cohort is through the program, the nursing department hopes to see it expand to offer more seats.

“It’s really neat to see the breadth of opportunities our students have,” notes Christianson. “Whether they’re from a healthcare system program, through to our undergrad and our masters program, and now to have the NP program on board, it’s just been really exciting to see it come to fruition.”

The university says it does give preference to Indigenous applicants or people who plan to work within Indigenous communities, alongside applicants from the Interior region, with the hope being that they’ll want to stay to work in Kamloops or the surrounding area after graduation.

“We were successful in getting the MN-NP program because of the support of our community. It’s only fair that we look at having students who are able to access our program who are local. We’re really excited. We think they’ll stay,” adds Srivastava.