Co-Creating a Regulatory Research Agenda
Reflections from a Nursing Regulation Dialogue
By Patrick Chiu & Kathleen (Kate) Leslie | March, 2025
Health practitioner regulation plays a crucial role in shaping the health workforce and ensuring safe, competent, and ethical care for the public. Despite its impact on health services, regulation remains understudied in Canada, and there is no coordinated pan-Canadian regulatory research agenda. To help bridge this gap, we held a virtual dialogue on March 6, 2025, bringing together system partners from across Canada to discuss regulatory research and co-create priorities to drive evidence-based evaluation and reform.
Funded by a Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) grant, this dialogue focused on nursing -- the largest segment of the health workforce, with approximately 450,000 nurses governed by 22 regulators across Canada. We were thrilled to welcome a diverse group of over 80 participants from coast to coast to coast, including nursing regulatory leaders, policymakers, educators, researchers, frontline providers, public representatives, and other system partners. This broad engagement highlights the urgency of strengthening research and knowledge mobilization to support evidence-informed regulation.
The presentation portion of the dialogue was recorded and can be viewed here or on the CHWN YouTube channel, with links directly to the different presentations and panels below.
Setting the Stage: Keynote Presentations
The dialogue opened with a series of presentations to give participants context on the state of nursing regulation and regulatory research. These presentations included:
• An overview of the WHO’s first guidance document on health practitioner regulation
• A discussion on nursing regulation in the global context
• A pan-Canadian perspective on nursing regulation
• Findings from a recent scoping review on nursing regulatory research in Canada
Bringing public perspectives to the forefront
Health practitioner regulation exists to protect the public interest, so it was important to centre public voices in this discussion. A panel of public, patient, and caregiver partners shared their perspectives on nursing regulation, highlighting the importance of ensuring the public is aware of what regulators are doing and involving public voices in a meaningful way.
Strengthening infrastructure for regulatory research
A second panel brought together three regulatory leaders to discuss strategies for developing sustainable infrastructure to support knowledge development and mobilization. They shared their experiences integrating research data into regulatory decision-making, sharing evidence with other regulators whenever possible, and leveraging opportunities to partner or support regulatory research by academics.
Co-creating research priorities
The dialogue continued with facilitated breakout rooms, where participants worked in small groups to refine research questions and identify barriers and facilitators to knowledge development and mobilization. We heard several key themes around building sustainable research partnerships, addressing data gaps, and understanding more about how regulation impacts workforce optimization. Their ideas of what a high-performing nursing regulatory system looks like:
Looking ahead to next steps
This dialogue marked an important step toward a pan-Canadian nursing regulation research agenda. We are preparing an academic manuscript summarizing what we heard about research priorities and actions that will be shared with participants and made openly available to the broader community.
We plan to expand these dialogues beyond nursing to include regulatory research across the broader health workforce. We invite all system partners to stay engaged in these conversations. Our goal is to establish a regulatory research hub, building on the work we are doing with the Health Workforce Evidence Support and Knowledge Mobilization Hub, to foster research partnerships, knowledge mobilization, and policy development. If you are interested in future discussions or research collaborations, we encourage you to connect with us.