Provisional registration may be granted to eligible applicants who want to work while meeting their outstanding registration requirements, such as passing the OSCE. If you are granted provisional registration you will be assigned specific conditions you must meet to be eligible for practising registration. When these conditions are met, your provisional registration is automatically converted to practising registration.
If you are not planning to practice nursing before gaining full registration, you do not need provisional registration.
How to apply
If you wish to be considered for provisional registration, please complete form 8.1A in your
application package for initial nurse practitioner registration.
What you need to know
- Eligibility
- To qualify for nurse practitioner (provisional) registration, an applicant must have applied to take, or be awaiting the results of, the nurse practitioner examinations and have met all the other requirements for nurse practitioner registration.
- Responsibilities and privileges
- Provisional registrants must satisfy BCCNM's
Professional Standards,
Scope of Practice Standards and
Practice Standards and all conditions placed on their registration.
- Use of title
Individuals with nurse practitioner (provisional) registration may call themselves a “nurse practitioner" (provisional) or "NP" (provisional).
Nurse practitioners (provisional or practising) are also authorized to continue using the title “registered nurse” or “RN”.
- Conditions on practice
-
- Nurse practitioners (provisional) must be monitored* by a nurse practitioner registered with BCCNM; or by a physician in good standing with the College of Physicians and Surgeons of British Columbia.
- Nurse practitioners (provisional) do not have authority to independently order diagnostic tests or prescribe medications.
Other possible conditions:
- That you must write and pass the written nurse practitioner registration examination.
- That you must write and pass the clinical nurse practitioner registration examination.
Monitoring defined
The monitoring physician/nurse practitioner is responsible for ensuring that the practice of the nurse practitioner (provisional) is safe and at the level of nurse practitioner practice, which includes the assessment, diagnosis and management of clients’ health as set out in the Scope of Practice for Nurse Practitioners Standards, Limits and Conditions. The methods of monitored practice need to be worked out between the nurse practitioner (provisional) and the monitoring physician/nurse practitioner, but should include activities such as:
-
regularly reviewing the nurse practitioner’s (provisional) assessments of clients’ health, differential diagnoses and/or diagnosis,
-
regularly reviewing/discussing recommendations and treatments/interventions made or to be made by the nurse practitioner (provisional), and
-
signing all prescriptions and diagnostic tests.
The monitoring physician/nurse practitioner should be on site and/or readily available so that the nurse practitioner (provisional) can consult and or collaborate as needed depending on either the learning needs of the nurse practitioner (provisional) or the needs of the client, which may be beyond the competence of the nurse practitioner (provisional).
- Registration renewal
-
- Provisional registration must be renewed annually. Learn more about registration renewal
- Nurse practitioners (provisional) must meet annual registration renewal requirements.
- Breaching conditions
- If you breach at of your provisional registration conditions, you may be referred to BCCNM Professional Conduct Review. You may also be required to suspend your nursing practice.
- Converting to practising NP registration
- Upon meeting all assigned conditions, you will need to submit final paperwork and fees to be converted to practising NP registration.