Voluntary Code of Ethical Conduct for Recruitment of Foreign-Educated Nurses to US

Introduction
The following Voluntary Code of Ethical Conduct for the Recruitment of Foreign-Educated Nurses to the United States (the Code) reflects the mutual recognition of stakeholder interests relevant to the recruitment of foreign educated nurses (FENs) to the United States. It is based on an acknowledgement of the rights of individuals to migrate, as well as an understanding that the legitimate interests and responsibilities of nurses, source countries, and employers in the destination country may conflict. It affirms that a careful balancing of those individual and collective interests offers the best course for maximizing the benefits and reducing the potential harm to all parties.

While the Code acknowledges the interests of these three primary stakeholder groups, its subscribers are the organizations that recruit and employ foreign educated nurses, e.g., third party recruiting firms, staffing agencies, hospitals, long-term care organizations and health systems. For the purposes of the Code, “Recruiters,” refers to those who contract with an FEN in a source country in order to facilitate their migration to the United States and their placement in health care employment. “Employers” refers to those health care organizations that employ FENs in the United States. Some entities provide both services, i.e., a health care employer may engage in direct recruitment and a recruiter may employ FENs under a staffing agency model in which the agency employs and contracts nurses to healthcare organizations on a short- or long-term basis. Where recruitment and employment services are the shared responsibility of two or more entities, each will be responsible for ensuring ethical conduct throughout the process.

Recruitment and employment organizations that subscribe to the Code voluntarily agree to comply with specific minimum standards, as specified in Part I of the Code, and to strive to achieve the best practices, as described in Part II of the Code. Subscription to the Code also implies full cooperation with the monitoring system that will be developed by a representative Board of Directors......