[laurasc]

It's interesting that the majority have said no...yet up here in Canada there are lots and lots of ads in the local paper from US hospitals all but begging for nurses to move south of the border.

[Diana61]

This is really unacceptable. One of our local hospitals will bring in 75 nurses from overseas next month.
Some of the other hospitals had started allowing flex time, increased salaries, etc.
I'm sure that when 75 nurses are dumped into the pool, we will see these gains again
be lost. Is it too much to ask for decent wages, working conditions, and a family friendly
employer. There was recently a study done that showed there is no present nursing
shortage. There are plenty of nurses, they just refuse to work for substandard wages and
in the working conditions of modern hospitals.

[phyll]

I have just read some of the comments on this subject. I am a RN, Scottish by birth, and presently living and working in UK as a hemodialysis nurse. I was educated at university standard. I have lived in the US and want to return there. I have passed the CGFNS exam and was also required to take an ENGLISH! exam, (although the American government has since excluded this for persons born and educated in the UK). I now have to take the NLEX-RN exam and have been studying continuously for this. I was about to ask American educated nurses for tips on taking this exam but after reading the comments on this page, I am wondering if I will be made to feel welcome.

[imaRN]

phyll,
Don't take this personally, and please understand, we in our field of nursing are unfortunately used to being undercut and taken advantage of. Just when the market starts to look like we will start getting a fair shake, another thing happens to block us from getting what we want and sooooo deserve!

Personally speaking as a staff nurse who believes in unionization and belongs to one, we just settled a contract with our hosp. and Did Not strike!
Then this week we find out our hospital has given our PRN nurses (who are not required to be union and who get no benefits) a Big Pay Raise, they will be making $28.00 per hour and if they commit to working one 12 hr. shift a week they will be making $35.00 per hour, I make $23.53 per hour (I used to think that was pretty good)
These PRN nurses are not on hosp. committees,don't help to orient. new nurses and are not in charge ever, in short they come in: work, and go home, they have no "investment " in making our unit better. They also do not work holidays or weekends,

Well I for one feel like I just got slapped in the face!

This will not encourage a stronger core of permanent nurses in our unit, it will encoourage more to become PRN nurses, weakening our unit.....so I feel recruiting out of our country nurses will just weaken our already feeble stand for bettering our profession and hospitals...just my opinion.......imaRN

[Navy Nurse]

I find it humurous that some talk about colleges must be at the same level as our and they have to have the same rigorous training to get licensed and yet there are programs here in the states you can get your degree in a year or on line and all I have heard about them is, they pass the same licensing test.

[NurseTami]

Well, Navy Nurse- I am the one who spoke of colleges being on the same level, yada yada- AND I do not for one minute think that a year of online courses is the same as classroom attendance. THAT is why I went BACK to school with my LPN to EARN the R in front of my N.
So I sure agree with you there.

I am talking about those who are educated in Third world countries, Phyll.

I have worked with some of these nurse and I do not care if they can pass the test. The ones I worked with would work long, long hours for little pay, and crappy benefits,which is why I do not work there any more, they ruined the pay scale. Or should I say, the management let the pay scale go because of their cheap labor?
Not to mention many of them were just not competent nurses. In fact most were not.

The worst part was when they insisted on speaking their own language even in front of patients. It is just RUDE.

[Diana61]

I have no problem with individuals from other countries making the effort to work in the US. I would welcome them with open arms. The problem comes when an effort by the hospitals to recruit large numbers of nurses from outside the US in order to staff the hospital. There are enough nurses right now in the US!!! They just don't work in nursing due to the wages and working conditions. (What other profession are you required to lift 100+ lbs. then be blamed for your injury because you didn't "lift correctly.") Once again, there are enough nurses (yes, there is a predicted shortage, but that hasn't come about yet)!!! There is a shortage of NURSES WORKING AS NURSES because they refuse to work under the conditions set forth by the majority of US hospitals.

As for the issue on prn staff having higher wages, I think that's OK and here's why: your compensation for working takes two forms (1) wages and (2) benefits. Benefits are usually 30-40 % of your wages, so the prn staffer who does not get benefits should have their salary adjusted by this amount in order to be fairly compensated. Another issue is that if the hospital doesn’t hire its own prn staff and is forced to use agency nurses, the cost can run up to $50 per hour with about $30 per hour of that going to the nurse. Soooo, the bottom line is that fiscally it makes since to employ PRN’s. It prevents the permanent staff from having to work forced overtime, it saves the hospital money (and who knows that MIGHT translate into higher wages for the permanent staff in the long run. The moral of the story is to welcome these PRN’ers with open arms. Develop friendships and professional relationships with them. Its in YOUR best interest that they’re there.

[phyll]

This is in reply to navy nurse.
I did not only train for one year nor did I achieve any credits online. In the UK it takes 3 years "rigorous" training before you can become a registerd nurse and I believe our universities are on par with American universities. After all, we do have places like St Andrews, Oxford Cambridge to name but a few.
As student nurses, we have to work in the wards (in most cases are counted in staff numbers) as well as study for exams and research and write essays.
I can understand why American nurses are angry because they feel that their problems are not being addressed, because we are in the same predicament in the UK and we are also grossly understaffed.

[fergus51]

Phyll, I think Navy nurse was criticizing US programs not yours.

I was one of those foreign recruits and have been back in Canada for a while. Just today I saw an ad for nurses in Honolulu with the ever present promises of signing bonuses and relocation $. I personally feel we need to start recruiting foreign nurses in Canada (especially Canadian nurses living in the US). Even if every nurse with a liscence and every new grad stayed we would still be short. We only graduate about 50% of the nurses we need each year. My experience in working with Brits, Aussies, South Africans, Chinese and even an AMERICAN (gasp!) have been very positive. I agree that credentials need to be checked and they are. If anything a lot of our foreing nurses are actually better trained in L&D as they were midwives in their home countries.

The issue of losing pay or benefits with the coming of foreigners has not been a problem here because we all work for the same employer and in the same union so we get the same benes and wages and our employer can't just change it unilaterally.

[mustangsheba]

I differentiate between nurses from English speaking countries (Phyll) who choose to come here to live and those from third world countries who do not speak understandable English, do not understand instructions, and whose cultural background interferes with communicating effectively. I worked with one nurse who could not comprehend why a C-spine collar was needed for a patient whose neck had not been cleared. She couldn't understand why the patient needed to be in a collar when they hadn't yet had their x-rays! We need to start recruiting with U.S. nurses.