Registered nurses who are working in mental health and addictions services will soon be able to advance their skills in the classroom through a new Masters of nursing program. The first of its kind in Atlantic Canada, Dalhousie’s Master of Nursing, Advanced Practice, Mental Health and Addictions, is accepting applications up until April 1 for its first cohort of 22 students that will begin this September.
The new Masters program is 30 credit hours, or 10 courses, offered in-person or online and completed in either two years full-time or three years if part-time. Two of the courses are clinical practicums in mental health and/or addictions settings. Students eligible for the program will already have two years experience working as a registered nurse in the area of mental health and/or addictions. The entire program offers students advanced and specialized education in both community and organizational mental health settings, through a combination of theory, simulation and clinical practice.
Graduates will learn to “holistically assess client needs at an advanced level, provide psychotherapies and other treatments and monitor responses to treatment,” reads the program’s website.
The director of Dal’s School of Nursing, Dr. Ruth Martin-Misener, says the origins of the program predate the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2018, the Masters program was developed in collaboration with the province, Nova Scotia Health and the IWK as a partial solution to the clear “population health need” of improvements to mental health services.
“There were a few advanced practice nurses in the field at that time, but they were all approaching retirement age,” says Martin-Misener. “And there weren’t enough of them.”
Nova Scotia has many people facing anxiety and depression, which are examples of common mental health challenges that nurses and other health care providers can help with. “Mental health is very important, and always has been, in nursing, because it’s such a prevalent need across populations,” says Martin-Misener. “Our goal at Dal and in nursing more broadly is to prepare nurses to meet population health needs, and mental health and addictions are definitely an area of need.”
According to a Mental Health Support Report Card published Jan. 17, 2024 by Mental Health Research Canada, Nova Scotia gets an “F” in mental health services and substance use health services. This report grades provinces in four categories: access, public confidence, satisfaction and effectiveness. Every province except New Brunswick failed the test on mental health services; in substance use health services, Nova Scotia was the only province to receive an “F,” with every other province scoring “D.”
The creation of this Masters program at Dal was identified in the Action for Healthcare section of Nova Scotia’s 2023/24 budget, which outlined $19.7 million in mental health support spending for the fiscal year ending Mar. 31, 2024. As a part of the province’s larger Action for Healthcare Strategic Plan 2022-2026, Nova Scotia allotted $6.5 billion into healthcare for 2023 to 2024, which the province says is $1.2 billion more than two years prior.
The Office of Addictions and Mental Health along with the Department of Advanced Education have given Dal $360,000 to fund this new nursing program, and have committed to additional funding in the following years up until 2031/32, reads the province’s news release.
Additionally, the program’s first group of full-time students are eligible for an “entrance award” worth the amount of the first term’s tuition.
“We’ve planned this program collaboratively” with the province, the IWK and the public health authority, says Martin-Misener, including with the help of an advanced practice nurse with mental health and addictions expertise. Martin-Misener says this collaborative design is what will make the program a success.
“The response from registered nurses has been very positive,” says Martin-Misener. “It’s really nice to see this program come to fruition.” She says the program is part of Dal’s own strategic plan at the nursing school “to contribute to the transformation of the health care system.”
Martin-Misener says the creation of the Masters program, and its hoped-for success, could transform the way students are taught nursing in undergraduate programs, too.
“I am anticipating that because of this program, it will profile mental health and addictions more for our undergraduate students,” she says. “They may look at it differently than they do now because they could see the opportunities within that field as it’s being highlighted more with a whole program devoted to it.”
This article appears in Feb 1-29, 2024.