One of the unique new features of Grande Prairie Regional Hospital is the 4,000 square meter education facility for the training of nurses. Grande Prairie Regional College nursing students will receive hands-on training at the Evaskevich Centre and have their classes held at GPRH.
Candice Edey, the Operational Lead for GPRH says that she is excited for GPRC nursing students to experience the best of both worlds.
“We’ve always been working with the college and students have been doing their practicums at QEII and that will continue. The simulation rooms are state of the art and create a perfect replica of what our in-patient rooms look like. They will have the opportunity to learn in the spaces they will be working in and that level of familiarity will give them another level of comfort. I’m a Grande Prairie girl born and raised. I did my nursing degree through the GPRC and I can definitely see that being a huge benefit for nursing students,” she says.
Stacy Greening, the Senior Operations Officer for the Grande Prairie region says she is really happy for nursing students to get the hands-on training they need. Greening also says that recruitment is ongoing but it is going well so far.
“We’re doing our best in terms of recruiting staffing, as we know there are global shortages for health care providers right now. That’s not unique to Grande Prairie and not unique to Alberta. We have a group of professionals in HR and a talent acquisition team looking at highlighting what we have here in terms of GPRH. On our YouTube channel, we have a number of commissioning videos and we’ve been successful in recruiting people for environmental services, nursing, and maintenance positions,” she says.
In March of 2021, GPRC announced that two new programs would be offered, a Health Care Aide certificate beginning this fall, as well as a Practical Nurse Diploma Program, beginning in the winter of 2022. However, only nursing students will enjoy their own individual wing at GPRH, called the Evaskevich Centre for Health and Research Innovation.
Paul and Coreen Evaskevich donated $500,000 and that became the largest donation in the college’s history. The Evaskevich Centre is the largest space for classes and training they’ve ever had.
