Saturday September 13, 2025 | VICTORIA, BC
by Mary P Brooke | Island Social Trends
The Province has added 65 nurse practitioner (NP) training seats to three post-secondary institutions, making training accessible in five regions throughout the province and supporting the growth of B.C.’s health-care workforce.
The announcement was made by Jessie Sunner, Minister of Post-Secondary Education and Future Skills, at UBC Surrey campus on Thursday September 11.
The training seat expansion is so that “more people can get timely, personalized care right in their own communities”, said Sunner.
UBC, UNBC and UVic:
The 65 new seats will be supported by the BC Government as 30 seats at the University of British Columbia (UBC); 20 seats at the University of Northern British Columbia (UNBC); and 15 seats at the University of Victoria (UVic).
Annual ongoing funding:
Government will provide $4.7 million in annual, ongoing funding for the 65 new seats.
These seat expansions have increased the number of people training to be nurse practitioners in B.C. to 165 per year.
To further support the expansions, government also provided $4.1 million to UNBC and $17.5 million to UBC for facility renovations.
The UBC relocation:
In September 2025, UBC moved its 30 new seats from the main Vancouver campus to a newly renovated space in Surrey.
That move is intended to make the NP program more accessible to students in the Fraser region, in addition to the Lower Mainland, northern B.C., Vancouver Island and the southern Interior.
TRU & UVic back in 2023:
In addition, as part of Budget 2021, government helped launch a new 15-seat nurse practitioner program at Thompson Rivers University (TRU), which opened in May 2023, and a new program stream at UVic for prospective nurse practitioners who already have a master of nursing degree.
Government committed to providing just over $1 million in ongoing annual funding for the new NP program at TRU and the new post-degree NP program stream at UVic.
NPs in team care:
“Nurse practitioners play a vital role in our primary-care teams, helping people get the care they need in their own communities without long waits or long travel,” said Josie Osborne, Minister of Health.
“By expanding training opportunities around our province, we’re not just creating more seats in classrooms, we’re building a stronger, more connected health-care workforce that will support people and families for years to come.”
Primary care strategy:
In 2018, the Province launched its primary-care strategy to increase patient attachment and access to quality, team-based and person-centred primary-care services throughout the province.
As both primary-care and acute-care providers, the BC government says that training more nurse practitioners will help increase B.C.’s network of care and will address gaps in underserved populations, such as those in rural or remote areas.
Many thousands of British Columbians are still without a family doctor due to a variety of reasons including many doctors retiring, doctors not wanting to take on a self-employment business-model of practice, the cost of front-end staffing, the cost of setting up an office facility, and younger doctors seeking a more balanced work-life career arrangement.
While former Health Minister Adrian Dix said that seniors would be taken up first from the BC Health Connect Registry, he later had to retract that, saying that doctors would be choosing their preferred client profile as they see fit.
The Province has taken the best possible option available, and that is to train more workers for the BC health-care system. Nurse practitioners are evidently seen as a reasonable substitute for physicians in many health scenarios.
===== RELATED:
- Two UBC allied health profession programs expanded to UVic (September 8, 2025)
- Recruiting American nurses to practice the BC way (May 12, 2025)
- Not enough family doctors: where falls the political obligation? (December 28, 2024)
- Primary health-care requires community-based approach say BC Greens (September 9, 2024)
- BC gains 708 net-new family doctors but there’s still a shortage (April 5, 2024)
- Boosting the BC nurse force over three years (April 4, 2023)
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