Streams

This stream focuses on the implementation and impact of CNA’s 2025 Code of Ethics for Nurses across designations, professional domains (i.e., practice, leadership, research, policy, education), health systems, and populations. Share nurse-led, community-led, or team-based actions and initiatives that improve accountability and outcomes (e.g., equitable access, patient/client/person [now referred to as ‘client’] experience, individual and population health).

The stream reflects the application of the seven core values:

• Value 1: Honouring the Dignity and Autonomy of All People
• Value 2: Valuing Relationships and Humanizing Care
• Value 3: Maintaining Integrity and Accountability in Nursing Practice
• Value 4: Pursuing Truth and Reconciliation
• Value 5: Promoting Social Justice
• Value 6: Providing Competent Professional Nursing Practice
• Value 7: Preserving Privacy and Confidentiality

Sessions in this stream explore objectives such as ethical decision-making, program improvement, policy adoption, co-design with partners, and population and health outcomes. Emphasis is placed on measurable impact, including community engagement, increased participation, equitable access, improved health outcomes, and successful policy implementation.

Indigenous-focused content centres on advancing the Truth & Reconciliation Commission of Canada: Calls to Action (18–24), including cultural safety and humility, Indigenous data sovereignty, relational accountability, and respectful partnership.

This stream explores how nurses are driving innovation in health care through the use of both new and existing technologies. Nursing leadership in the adoption and integration of advanced technologies and tools, including artificial intelligence, is transforming care delivery and shaping more responsive health systems

This stream highlights how technology enhances the client experience and contributes to improved health outcomes, enabling more efficient, personalized, and equitable care. It examines how innovation connects to policy levers like digital investments and data sovereignty, and the measurable impacts on individuals, communities, nurses, and teams.

Examples may include, but are not limited to:

• Virtual care models (e.g., remote patient monitoring, on-demand, telehealth)
• Digital solutions (e.g., electronic health records, AI, mobile health apps)
• New & emerging technologies (e.g., wearables, robotics, smart medical devices, automated systems, new medical products, genomics)

This stream highlights nursing expertise and specialty nursing practice (SNP) roles across the continuum of care as critical drivers for health system improvement. It explores how specialized nursing knowledge and practice is central to high-quality and comprehensive care, improves the client experience, and achieves better outcomes while bending the cost curve.

This stream examines the systems, structures, and mechanisms that support the development and recognition of specialized nursing knowledge and practice, including approaches that optimize specialty certification and strengthen both intra-professional and interprofessional collaboration to advance equitable care.

SNP excellence across care settings is reflected through:

• Leadership
• Education
• Policy and advocacy
• Networking
• Research
• Evidence-informed practice

The Canadian Network of Nursing Specialties (CNNS) is a network of national associations in a variety of specialized areas of nursing. CNNS contributes to CNA’s national nursing voice and its work to shape and influence health policy and drive systemic change.

This stream focuses on nurse- and co-led solutions that support workforce well-being and improve retention across health systems. Nurses represent over 40% of Canada’s health workforce, yet retention challenges — particularly among those under 35 — highlight the urgent need for sustainable, supportive approaches to working conditions and professional practice.

Drawing on Health Canada’s Nursing Retention Toolkit: Improving the Working Lives of Nurses in Canada, this stream explores key themes and values that contribute to healthier workplaces, including:

1. Inspired leadership
2. Flexible and balanced ways of working
3. Organizational mental health and wellness support
4. Professional development and mentorship
5. Reduced administrative burden
6. Strong management and communication
7. Clinical governance and infrastructure
8. Safe staffing practices

Sessions in this stream highlight initiatives that build capacity for nurses within and across health systems to prevent moral distress, vicarious trauma, psychological safety, and improve retention. It also explores outcomes related to recruitment and retention strategies, workplace excellence, and implementation science programs (e.g., Stellar Certification Program, Best Practice Spotlight Organization, EXTRA™ Fellowship Teams Program).

This stream examines the crucial role of nurses in driving health system reform and improving outcomes across Canada. Despite significant health expenditures, Canada continues to experience uneven performance , particularly for populations facing inequities. As the largest group of regulated health-care professionals, nurses’ leadership and expertise (e.g., post-licensure credentials and qualifications) needs to be fully optimized to drive health system reform and transformation.

Aligned with CNA’s Policy Roadmap for 2025 and Beyond, this stream highlights bold and practical strategies to strengthen health systems through collaboration, co-design, and evidence-informed approaches. It focuses on actionable policy pathways, scalable solutions, and ongoing evaluation.

Key areas of focus include:

• Improving Access & Quality by Implementing Bold Policy Levers
• Unleashing the True Value of the Nursing Workforce to Meet Population Health Needs
• Investing in the Well-Being of the Health Workforce & Prioritizing National Workplace Protections
• Tackling the Social Determinants of Health & Investing in Planetary Health
• Strengthening Our Public Health System & Combatting Mis-/Disinformation

Sessions in this stream emphasize practical solutions and strategies that support nurses across Canada to drive change, lead system transformation, and improve health outcomes.