Yellowknife (May 20/05) - The role of nurses in the North continues to expand and change, says Elizabeth Cook, president of the Registered Nurses Association of the NWT and Nunavut.

That role was celebrated in Yellowknife and throughout the North last week.

A dinner on Florence Nightingale's birthday (May 12) was held at L'Heritage restaurant in honour of the decade-long program.

It was both National Nursing Week and the tenth anniversary of the beginning of the nursing program at Aurora College, Cook said.

Beginning as a diploma program, Cook said nursing has evolved into a baccalaureate program through partnership with the University of Victoria and other university colleges in B.C.

"Our first graduates will be in 2006 and there will be about 18 with their degrees," she said.

Currently, there are about 1,100 licensed nurses in both the NWT and Nunavut.

Cook also said most of the graduates are expected to stay in the North, because they are from the North.

"But the program itself does not prepare them to work in an advanced practice role that is required in small communities," she noted.

"But we do want people educated in the North to work in the North," she said.

This means adding an elective course in the fourth-year of the program which focuses on advanced health assessment. Students learn how to suture, how to prescribe or dispense drugs or how to make a diagnosis in preparation for working in the smaller isolated communities, where physicians generally visit only every four to six weeks.

A group of 13 nurses is undergoing the introduction to advanced practice at Aurora.

Anna Mysliborski of Vancouver has been nursing for four years. She considers the training to be the next step forward after working in the emergency department.

"I like the idea of being part of the culture and the independence and knowledge," Mysliborski said.

Lindsay Tarasoff, also from Vancouver, was excited about experiencing the North and its culture.

"I'd been looking for another outlet in terms of working towards furthering my education," Tarasoff said. "I want to go as far North as I possibly can.