As RNAO’s first practising nurse practitioner (NP) president, Lhamo Dolkar recalls what RNAO CEO Dr. Doris Grinspun once said to her: “There is always a right president at the right time.” At this juncture, and with the current challenges facing NPs and the broader health system, Dolkar believes it’s the right time for her RNAO presidency. She says she hopes to focus on “how NPs can better be a part of health-care transformation and work collaboratively with all nursing colleagues.”

Even before Dolkar became an NP in 2021, she commended RNAO’s push for policy-level changes for NPs, including improved NP utilization, scope expansion and full integration of the role into the health system. “RNAO has always been instrumental in influencing change (for NPs),” she says. And that change includes the first NP-led clinic in the country, which opened in 2007 in Sudbury, to the more recent announcements related to scope expansion, increased education seats and more (see some of these highlights below and on the RNAO and NPs In Focus webpage).