New legislation - a concern!!

I think you are correct in assuming that this is another way to keep us in our place. can these immigrants speak english well enough to communicate? Can the immigrants WRITE english and medical jargon? Nurses are NOT seen as PROFESSIONALS!!! We are servers....period. Money talks and u know what walks.....in this case they save big bucks { they will probably pay less for these nurses }.. and unfortunately as I am always told the nurse is extremely expendable. Lots of people will lose their jobs on this one I bet and the ultimate kicker here is, that one more time we are powerless to stop it

In my experience, the foreign born and educated nurses were educated IN English, as most medical text are written in English. However, the jargon and common use of the language is a barrier, as well as cultural considerations. There is also the problem of difficult to understand accents, as well as a group of persons who stick together, speaking their own language instead of English, and insist that it is their right to do so, never mind that the patients in the room feel like merchandise instead of humans.

I have also worked with very professional foreign born nurses who would never be so callous.

It is also my experience that their BSN does not necessarily mean they know as much nursing as your average LPN.
Go figure.

OH OH!!!!! Did I come off as sounding biased? Not intended. I just happen to work with many Hispanics and Jamacans etc etc....wonderful people as they are, communication is ever so difficult. Some of these workers speak 3 or 4 different languages....a feat I muself will never attain......SHOOT I can't even type right apparently!!!!!! I do agree with you that perhaps their schooling has not been as it would be in the states. Dunno. I just think that bringing these immigrants, whomever they may be or where ever they may come from ....is just an excuse to not face the true problems . Bringing in agency, say, instead of immigrants,,,,bringing in people is not the answer. The answer is....we as nurses ARE professionals. Healthcare in this system cannot run without us. Give us our daily bread AND a bit of clout!!!!! { smile }

nursetami--why do you have to compare??? i know some lpns and rnsADN that know alot more than your basic bsn. alot depends on your experience. there are some nurses in each category that excel in knowledge and for you to make comparisons like you did just fuels the flame for problems between lpn, bsn, adnrn and cna. i'm not trying to jump on you but can you see my point???????

Please DO NOT misconstrue what I write here. I try not to be jingoistic, isolationist, or ethnocentric. I think I am a very compassionate person, and I try never to hurt feelings.

I worked with two lovely ladies from Nigeria a few years back and with another one from Israel (actually she was Palestinian). They were all RN's in their countries. The Nigerian ladies also had their MSN. The Israeli lady had a diploma. They all "spoke" English. In fact I understand that English is the language in NIgeria for academics. The problem was they still had their native accents. Face to face it was easier than listening to the taped report we used. Some of the doctors refused to speak to them.

The 2 MSNs stayed only long enough to have their families join them and then they left for Washington, DC. The Palestinian lady wanted only to apply for citizenship in the USA, and then wanted to leave for Arabia, because US nurses were welcome there, Israeli nurses were not.

I don't know what the answer is. As nice as these nurses were, they were not fully performing as staff nurses, because others had to do parts of their assignments.

That doesn't really say what I mean but I hope you understand. I will say their attendance and their attitudes were outstanding. I enjoyed meeting and knowing their families. It was just very hard to know that they were only there a short while.

Hi. Unfortunately, P_RN, as you probably know there are wide variations of nursing practice from country to country. Why even in the U.S., there are some variations in nursing practice from state to state. Other countries don't have access to the world class medicine that is available here in the U.S. The problem as I see it is not so much nurses from other countries maybe only having limited hands on skills with technology that we in the states take for granted, but it's what wildtime referred to in some of his posts. We have problems in our own backyard that the resources were and are there to take care of, but instead, we let opportunity after opportunity slip away from us on a grand scale. We also have inexcusable disparities of care among our citizens, especially our children, elderly, and working poor.

While I think that the impact of foreign nurses in the U.S. should be discussed, I hope that individually we not lose sight of the underlying problems in our country by placing blame on foreign nurses for being used to slow down nursing shortages. As you all know, I can find plenty of blame to go elsewhere.