Student Leaders’ Visions of Nursing Education, Current and Future: An Interview With Scarlett Montserrat Sanabria-Ramos and Brooklynn Bellisle of the Canadian Nursing Students’ Association

Thank you.I would like to begin this conversation with your advocacy role, vis-à-vis governments, regulatory bodies, educational institutions and programs, and health care organizations.From your perspective, what are the major issues that you are currently calling attention to because they could potentially affect the quality of nursing education?SMSR: I think we're seeing three main issues at the moment.One of the biggest concerns right now is that there's an expansion for nursing education, but it's happening faster than the infrastructure needed to support it.In Canada, absolutely, we need more nurses.An increase in the programs, the nursing seats, is part of that.But more seats doesn't automatically mean more nurses.Every additional student needs a quality clinical placement, qualified preceptors, faculty support, and meaningful opportunities to develop competency.We're already hearing from students about placement shortages, inconsistent clinical experiences, and even delays to their programs.Just yesterday, I had a meeting with one of my directors.She comes from the Northern communities.Their classes are being delivered virtually because programs are struggling to recruit professors that are willing or able to teach in person.At the same time, students are facing limited clinical opportunities because there are simply not enough clinical instructors and preceptors available.So, if we increase the seats without increasing the capacity around the students, we are risking moving the bottleneck instead of solving it.And we cannot prioritize how many students we admit over the quality of the nurses we're preparing. BB:The second issue is financial accessibility, particularly during the final clinical practicum.Students can be completing their full-time clinical hours while still paying for tuition, transportation, housing, and living expenses with very limited opportunity to work.Financial pressures become an educational issue when students are forced to choose between fully engaging in clinical education and being able to afford it.The third issue is safety, particularly psychological safety in clinical education.Students are in learning environments with significant power imbalances.They need to be able to ask questions, make supervised mistakes, and report bullying, harassment, violence, and practices without fearing retribution.JP: If you happened to meet a politician or a head of a health organization in an elevator, and you could pitch your concerns, how would you present these and what would you suggest that they do?SMSR: I think with politicians, you have to talk to the numbers and the future of nursing workforce in Canada.So, I would tell them something like, "Imagine being short nearly 50,000 nurses while the students are caring for the patients and they're paying to be there."We absolutely need more nurses, but adding seats alone is not going to solve the nursing shortage.We need quality clinical placements, faculty preceptors, safe learning, and the financial ability to make it through education, especially during the final practicum, which is the last semester for students.