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The COVID-19 pandemic has revealed long-standing deficiencies with existing nurse recruitment and retention approaches, resulting in critical shortages of nursing capacity that are set to worsen without appropriate action. Decades of evidence and experience suggest that a multi-pronged approach that fosters an enabling and supportive work environment for nurses across all stages of their working lifespan will be required to build a more sustainable nursing workforce. This paper demonstrates Nova Scotia's innovation in creating a comprehensive, evidence-informed approach to nursing workforce planning and management, including key strategic areas of action related to (1) facilitating entry into the workforce, (2) investing in the active workforce and (3) enhancing support for and managing attrition of the workforce. This paper also offers nursing leaders a series of reflections on current learnings in the implementation of this innovative and person-centred approach to nursing workforce sustainability. Recognizing the pressing need for action, Nova Scotia Health and provincial leaders have and are implementing strategic innovations to enhance the nursing workforce. These include: (1) investment in organizational capacity for evidence-based innovation, (2) development of collaborative relationships between both internal stakeholders and community partners and (3) creation of mechanisms for meaningful engagement and co-design of locally relevant innovative solutions., (Copyright © 2022 Longwoods Publishing.)

Repeated calls to adopt more robust workforce planning, particularly for the nursing workforce, stretch back decades. These calls have generally not been met with action by health system decision makers, and the negative consequences - widespread shortages, even in wealthy countries, and decreased quality of care despite increased costs - have come to pass much as predicted. In contrast to this historical pattern, this paper presents Nova Scotia Health's experience in planning for its critical care nursing workforce during COVID-19 as a case study in integrating evidence-based workforce planning into the operations of a healthcare organization., (Copyright © 2021 Longwoods Publishing.)

Objectives: A self-test screening program for genital C. trachomatis infection in female students attending high school in rural Nova Scotia was introduced. The objectives of this pilot study were to determine the extent of uptake, reasons for being/not being screened, and whether students at risk would be more likely to be screened., Methods: The screening program was carried out between September 2005 and May 2006. Test kits were accessed through the school's health centre without first seeing the school nurse for counselling. Tests were processed non-nominally at the laboratory. A cross-sectional survey was offered to all students in the school to assess factors related to participation or non-participation. Univariate analysis was carried out for young women's sexual activity and risk taking, reasons for being participants or non-participants, risk behaviours, and knowledge about chlamydia., Results: One hundred and sixty-three women (58%) had had vaginal intercourse at least once. Twenty-four of these used the self-test kit. Though 83% of those not using the self-test knew that females with chlamydia are very often asymptomatic, 54% indicated lack of symptoms as a reason for not doing so. Many (49%) gave low probability of infection as a reason for not using the kit, but high-risk sexual activity was frequent in these young, Discussion: Uptake of self-testing for C. trachomatis was lower than anticipated. This may be due to lack of counselling meant to encourage testing to overcome a dissonance of knowledge and behaviour. Self-testing should be further explored to better understand its potential to increase chlamydia screening among Canadian adolescents.