Nursing students and educators from around the world are in Saskatoon discussing ways to provide better nursing health care to northern and Indigenous communities.

"There are a number of different issues but the main one is accessibility," Lorna Butler from the College of Nursing at the University of Saskatchewan said Thursday.

Butler is the senior strategist for distributed and technology enhanced learning and discovery at the college.

The Saskatoon conference brings together people from Greenland, Iceland, Norway, Finland, Russia and Canada from Aug. 2 to 12.

Among their goals is finding ways to improve the teaching of northern nursing education and share best practices. Butler said a Saskatchewan initiative, where training is done in home communities, is making a difference.

"We have people who understand the culture, values and beliefs of those communities," she said. The courses are delivered using new technology.

"We have used remote response technology — or robots," Butler explained, which goes beyond video conferencing.

Butler said having people from the community provide nursing care leads to better health outcomes.

"If we just address the health, then we're not really at the root at the concerns," she said, noting that local nurses will have good understanding of local issues. "Until we address those, we'll only be looking at symptoms of a disease rather than looking at how we change communities to be more sustainable in terms of their own health."

The robots used in the training allow professors and students to interact in a valuable way.

"[Professors] can walk around the room. There are high-powered cameras. They can teach the clinical skills as if they were right there," she said.

"We do not a substandard program," Butler added. "We want our students to have exactly the experience that they would have if they went on campus."

While students in remote locations can complete their entire degree staying in their community, they will need to travel to different places for clinical experience.

Some students will work in Meadow Lake, North Battleford and Prince Albert. They will also visit other communities in the north.

"Our vision … is to be global leaders in putting health into place for northern and Indigenous people," Butler said.