Causes and Impact of Importing Foreign Nurses
Causes and Impact of Importing Foreign Nurses
Can you imagine this scene? When your child suddenly has a high fever in the middle of night, you hurry to the hospital. You find out that you have to wait in a crowded emergency room with your crying child because there are not enough nurses and doctors to take care of many patients right away. After a long wait, a nurse finally comes to check your sick baby, but you notice the nurse speaks English with heavy accent. You start to get irritated trying to understand her because you are tired and worried about your baby. You start to wonder if you can trust this nurse. Why this foreign nurse working at this hospital in the United States? Is she qualified? This situation is not unusual anymore in the United States. Foreign nurses who work in America are increasing every year because of the serious nursing shortage in America. The current shortage is the product of several trends including population growth especially of the aging, high attrition rate in the nursing workforce, and an insufficient number of nursing schools. Typical solutions to address past nursing shortages have included increasing wages and recruiting nurses from other countries. As the United States has focused on importation of foreign nurse to solve its nursing shortage problem, this trend brought about three important consequences: nursing shortages in the donor countries, concerns about foreign nurses’ technical and cultural competence, and impact on existing work condition problems for American nurses.
The nursing shortage is not a fresh issue since the United States has experienced this problem since the Second World War. The problem has not yet been solved and has intensified every year. However, today’s nursing shortage is fundamentally different from past shortages, which largely resulted from short term, cyclical changes in the supply and demand for nurses. But the current shortage is unique because it is getting worse even
Can you imagine this scene? When your child suddenly has a high fever in the middle of night, you hurry to the hospital. You find out that you have to wait in a crowded emergency room with your crying child because there are not enough nurses and doctors to take care of many patients right away. After a long wait, a nurse finally comes to check your sick baby, but you notice the nurse speaks English with heavy accent. You start to get irritated trying to understand her because you are tired and worried about your baby. You start to wonder if you can trust this nurse. Why this foreign nurse working at this hospital in the United States? Is she qualified? This situation is not unusual anymore in the United States. Foreign nurses who work in America are increasing every year because of the serious nursing shortage in America. The current shortage is the product of several trends including population growth especially of the aging, high attrition rate in the nursing workforce, and an insufficient number of nursing schools. Typical solutions to address past nursing shortages have included increasing wages and recruiting nurses from other countries. As the United States has focused on importation of foreign nurse to solve its nursing shortage problem, this trend brought about three important consequences: nursing shortages in the donor countries, concerns about foreign nurses’ technical and cultural competence, and impact on existing work condition problems for American nurses.
The nursing shortage is not a fresh issue since the United States has experienced this problem since the Second World War. The problem has not yet been solved and has intensified every year. However, today’s nursing shortage is fundamentally different from past shortages, which largely resulted from short term, cyclical changes in the supply and demand for nurses. But the current shortage is unique because it is getting worse even