December 15, 2022
December 2022

CNO by the numbers

What did 2022 look like at CNO? Here are some fun facts and figures about the year that was.

What did 2022 look like at CNO? Here are some fun facts and figures about the year that was.

Record registrations

We registered more new nurses than ever before. One of our top priorities during this extraordinary time in health care is the timely registration of applicants who are qualified to provide safe care. By improving our processes and creating collaborative programs, we registered 12,197 new nurses between Jan. 1, 2022, and Dec. 1, 2022 — our highest number ever. Internationally-educated nurses (IENs) also set a record, with 6,727 new registrations over the same time.

Connecting with CNO

Between Jan. 1 and Nov. 29, 2022, our Customer Service team made 59,985 phone calls: We answered your calls 23,688 times, and 31,903 of you chose to have us call you back. Our staff also initiated 4,394 calls to you. Parlez-vous français? Nous aussi! We answered 1,467 calls en francais this year.

Some of you preferred to reach us in writing, and our Customer Service staff responded to 36,504 emails.

Social butterflies

We’re grateful to all of you who follow and connect with us on social media. CNO is on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram, and this year our community grew by 12,677 new followers. Welcome to all the newcomers! In total, over 78,000 people follow us on social media.

We published almost 3,000 posts across our platforms, and you all liked, commented, and shared them a total of 257,687 times.

We love hearing from you on our platforms — and we respond as often as we can. This year, we sent 5,293 responses on social media.

SPEP-tacular

Of everything we accomplished in 2022, one of the initiatives we are most proud of is the Supervised Practice Experience Partnership (SPEP). By collaborating with Ontario Health and the Ministry of Health to create this innovative new program, we were able to get over 1,000 new nurses registered. As of Dec. 2, we have 549 nursing employers participating in the program, including 309 in long-term care and 93 in the hospital sectors.

SPEP is helping to get nurses into some of the most needed areas. Over 1900 applicants have been matched through SPEP, including 144 to employers in northern and rural communities, 729 into long-term care and 1,109 into hospitals. We’re excited to see how SPEP will continue to help qualified applicants become registered as nurses in 2023 and beyond.

Have a question? Ask practice!

Did you know that CNO has a team of Advanced Practice Consultants ready to answer your questions about nursing accountabilities? These experienced nurses can help you navigate and understand how the standards apply to your practice. In 2022, they responded to over 2,500 inquiries from nurses, employers, unions, associations, educators and members of the public.

You can see the most frequently asked questions on our Ask Practice page. We update it frequently as new questions come in. If you have a question, check our FAQs or write to the team.

Out and about

We gave 42 presentations this year on a wide variety of topics to lots of different audiences. This includes connecting with applicants about changes to the Temporary Class and , talking to students and educators about exams, entry-level competencies, and gap-filler programs, and meeting with system partners, such as the First Nations Inuit Health Branch or the Nursing Program Transformation initiative.

Love stats? See more registration totals

Want to connect? CNO is on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram 

Meet the first nurse ever registered through SPEP: Sukh Kaur. 

Nursing practice question? Check out Ask Practice.

About CNO

The College of Nurses of Ontario (CNO) is the regulator of the nursing profession in Ontario. It is not a school or a nursing association. CNO acts in the public interest by:

  • assessing qualifications and registering individuals who want to practice nursing in Ontario.
  • setting the practice standards of the profession that nurses in Ontario are expected to meet.
  • promoting nurses' continuing competence through a quality assurance program.
  • holding nurses accountable to those standards by addressing complaints or reports about nursing care.

The College was founded in 1963. By establishing the College, the Ontario government was acknowledging that the nursing profession had the ability to govern itself and put the public's well-being ahead of professional interests.

For the latest information, please see our Nursing Statistics page.

Anyone who wants to use a nursing-related title — Registered Nurse (RN), Registered Practical Nurse (RPN) or Nurse Practitioner (NP) must become a member of CNO.

Frequently Asked Questions

Go to the public Register, Find a Nurse, to conduct a search for the nurse. Contact us if you can't find the person you are looking for.

All public information available about nurses is posted in the public Register, Find a Nurse, which contains profiles of every nurse in Ontario. Publicly available information about nurses include their registration history, business address, and information related to pending disciplinary hearings or past findings.

Unregistered practitioners are people who are seeking employment in nursing or holding themselves out as being able to practice nursing in Ontario, but who are not qualified to do so. They are not registered members of CNO. Only people registered with CNO can use nursing-related titles or perform certain procedures that could cause harm if carried out by a non-registered health professional. CNO takes the issue of unregistered practitioners seriously. See Unregistered Practitioners for more information.

To ensure procedural fairness for both the patient (or client) and the nurse, the Regulated Health Professions Act requires that information gathered during an investigation remain confidential until the matter is referred to the Discipline Committee or Fitness to Practise Committee. CNO will not disclose any information that could identify patients (or clients) or compromise an investigation. See Investigations: A Process Guide for more information.

Information obtained during an investigation will become public if the matter is referred to a disciplinary hearing. If a complaint is not referred to a hearing, no information will be available publicly.

See CNO's hearings schedule, which is updated as hearing dates are confirmed. Hearings at CNO are open to the public and the media. For details on how to attend a hearing, contact the Hearings Administration Team.

A summary of allegations and the disciplinary panel outcomes can be found on the public Register, Find a Nurse. Full decisions and reasons are also available.

Where a disciplinary panel makes a finding of professional misconduct, they have the authority to reprimand a nurse, and suspend or revoke a nurse's registration. Terms, conditions and limitations can also be imposed on a nurse's registration, which restricts their practice for a set period. Nurses can also be required to complete remedial activities, such as reviewing CNO documents and meeting with an expert, before returning to practice.

For detailed information see the Sexual Abuse Prevention section.

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