Professional self-regulation is a privilege and a responsibility granted to the registered nursing profession by government on behalf of the people of Manitoba. The authority for self-regulation is through the Registered Nurses Act. The College of Registered Nurses is charged with regulating its members. Self-regulation acknowledges that a profession itself is in the best position to determine standards for education and practice and to ensure that these standards are met.
Since 1913, with the proclamation of the first Registered Nurses Act, registered nursing has been a self-regulated profession in Manitoba. The current Act was proclaimed in 2001 and provides the framework for self-regulation.
Self-regulation is a privilege of a profession, not a right. In essence, society contracts with the registered nursing profession to regulate its own members in order to protect the public from harm that could be caused by registered nurses in the course of their practice. When there is a conflict between public interest and professional self-interest, regulatory bodies such as the College of Registered Nurses of Manitoba are expected to support the public interest.
How Do We Self-Regulate?
The purpose of regulation is to ensure that registered nurses practice in a safe, competent and ethical manner. To that end, self-regulation involves three over-all principles: promoting good practice, preventing undesirable practice, and intervening when necessary. We exercise our responsibilities by:
Promoting Good Practice
- We establish and maintain a registration process that ensures those who practice as registered nurses or graduate nurses are qualified and competent.
- Establishing and monitoring nursing practice standards.
- Promoting evidence-based practice that is safe, competent and ethical.
- Establishing and monitoring continuing competence requirements.
- Influencing healthy public policy by raising government’s awareness of the nursing profession’s ability to contribute meaningfully to solutions to important health care issues.
Preventing Undesirable Practice
- Setting and monitoring requirements for registration on the RN, GN and RN(EP) registers.
- Providing access to online information to support the knowledge needs of registered nurses as they face the increasingly complex demands of practice through NurseOne at www.nurseone.ca
- Approving a code of ethics to guide practice.
- Requiring individuals to write the Canadian Registered Nursing Examinations to demonstrate a beginning level of knowledge on which to base their practice.
- Addressing the undesirable nursing practice of individual registered nurses by involvement in the Practitioner Remediation and Enhancement Partnership (PREP) program.
Intervening in Instances of Unacceptable Practice
- Receiving formal complaints and administering appropriate disciplinary and corrective remedial action.
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