2024 Winners

Mentoring in LTC

The crucial role mentoring plays in the development of nurses and nurse leadership is well known.  Not so well known is how the unique context of working in Long Term Care changes how mentorship is provided.

MAPPED

Facilitating effective patient discharge education for new parents may optimize patient education, streamline nurse-patient interactions, and reduce the risk of readmission and post-discharge concerns.

Primary Care Solutions

Primary Care Solutions offers training that allows health care professionals to fulfill the scope of their practice through a medium that is broadly accessible. The project will reduce some of the pressure on specialists, allowing more serious cases to access needed care more quickly.

Where We’re Going

How far can RNFOO go with supporting nursing innovation?  The limits are defined only by the vision of our volunteers and the generosity of our donors.  Our work to date has shown that the capacity for innovation within the Ontario nursing profession is huge. 

The Foundation has a solid base of volunteers ready, willing and able to review proposals, determine winners, and oversee the completion of projects.

What RNFOO needs now is donors committed to continuing support for innovation in nursing, and volunteers with connections, insight, and stamina to help us find new individuals, organizations, and corporations with the resources and the commitment to continuing this crucially important work.

Where We Were

The Nurse Innovator Award (NIA) was conceived by the Honorary Life Members of the Registered Nurses’ Foundation of Ontario to enable, encourage, support and celebrate nursing innovation. The initial fundraising campaign recruited individuals and organizations, enabling RNFOO to distribute $404,000+ to innovative and entrepreneurial nurses in Ontario. The awards were presented at receptions held in November each year from 2019 to 2023.  The projects supported through the NIA covered the breadth of nursing in Ontario, dealing with Pediatrics to Long Term Care, covering sites from Ottawa in the east, Sudbury in the north, and Cambridge in the south-west, and including all nursing designations: RPN, RN, and RN-EC.

Project descriptions and reports from the Nurse Innovator Award winners are listed below.

The story of the beginning of the NIA can be read in the March 2020 Longwoods Blog Nurse Innovator Award: Enabling Nursing Creativity & Innovation. A report on the program was presented at the ICN conference in July 2023. And we’re not finished telling the story yet!