More seats are coming to the Practical Nursing program at Southeast College’s Weyburn campus. 

“There was an announcement yesterday through the Ministry of Advanced Education that as part of the Government of Saskatchewan Health and Human Resources Action Plan to increase capacity in Saskatchewan,” explained Sheena Onrait, Manager of Marketing and Communications at the college, on Wednesday afternoon. “We have been designated some additional funding to be able to support the additional intake of another practical nursing program at our Weyburn campus.” 

The one-time funding will create 14 new seats in the program, with the classes for those seats to start in September of this year. There is currently a cohort of students in their first year of the two-year program that started this past September. There will then be another cohort of students that will start the class in September of 2024.  

The announcement on the funding was part of a province-wide announcement for the creation of 550 post-secondary training seats in 18 healthcare training programs.  

"This initiative will open up exciting new health career options for many more Saskatchewan students by giving them greater access to training for their career of choice," Advanced Education Minister Gordon Wyant said. "The scale of this unprecedented expansion of Saskatchewan's health training capacity demonstrates our government's commitment to strengthening our health care workforce. We are grateful for the support of our partners across the post-secondary education and health sectors." 

The applications are now open at Southeast College for the 14 seats to start in the fall.  

“Typically, we will get three to four times that in applications, and usually all those applications are kind of designated into the waiting list, so you know, sometimes we go through a couple spots on the waiting list but not enough to get through the full applicant list,” Onrait added.  

For information on applying for the program at Southeast College, you can visit their website.