Foreign Doctors Become RNs

[TartarSauce]

FYI- IT IS THE FIRST college program of its kind in the U.S.

started at Florida International University (FIU) MIAMI, FL.

SUPPORTED BY $600,000.00 from HCA.

PERHAPS the states of NY and CA WOULD LIKE TO START THIS PROGRAM TOO. THEY HAVE A LARGE GROUP OF FOREIGN DOCTORS...

THANKS

NURSE BETTY

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news: foreign nurses become RNs

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Posted on Mon, Dec. 15, 2003

FIU

Program gets foreign-born physicians back into healthcare profession BY ELINOR J. BRECHER

[email protected]

For much of a decade, Jean Fenelon was the healthcare delivery system in the southeast Haitian city of Thiotte: population 50,000. A state-trained doctor, he diagnosed and treated serious diseases and delivered babies.

But he had to flee after a failed political campaign in 1994 and was granted asylum in the United States.

To support a wife and three kids, he picked oranges and sold water pumps.

''I was in despair,'' said Fenelon, 45, who ran afoul of vicious dogs and suspicious homeowners in his door-to-door sales job. ``I had so much to offer, but you can´t use that here.´´

That changes today when he will be one of 32 in the first graduating class of Florida International University's Foreign

Physicians-to-Nursing program, the only one of its kind in the country. An RN job awaits Fenelon in the cardiac unit of Osceola Medical Center in Orlando.

''It's a second opportunity for us,'' said Fenelon, whose family remained in Orlando while he trained in South Florida and stayed with friends. ``Sometimes you have that feeling that once you are a doctor, you are always a doctor, but you need to see nursing as a promotion.´´

FIU launched the program two years ago, hoping to make a dent in South Florida's nursing shortage. The first class handled 40 students who paid the standard tuition of $2,500 for a three-semester year, and did weekend clinical rotations.

They were permitted to waive certain basic courses in the bachelor of sciences in nursing curriculum, and test out of others, according to Dr. Divina Grossman, FIU's nursing school director. Like all graduating nurses, they will have to pass state licensing boards. The youngest is 33, the oldest 52, Grossman said, adding that they come from Cuba, Romania, Haiti, Nicaragua, Mexico, the Dominican Republic and the Philippines.

The next class has 60 students, and the mere possibility of salvaging a medical career has generated a waiting list of 632, she said. Hospital Corporation of America, which owns hospitals nationwide, as well as Mercy, Cedars and Kendall Regional Medical Center, provides $600,000 for the program, which gets no public money. It appears to be a good investment as far as HCA is concerned, said company spokeswoman Lourdes Garrido, who cautioned that an accurate assessment would have to wait until the graduates had been in the workforce for awhile. CRITICAL SHORTAGE

There were 176,113 RNs in Florida in June 2002, according to the Florida Center for Nursing, a state agency created to address the shortage. Some estimates -- based on the aging population -- say Florida will need 34,000 more RNs by 2006.

An aging nursing workforce compounds the problem, said Leslie Homsted, R.N., director of professional practice advocacy for the Florida Nurses Association.

''People all across the country are looking at'' the FIU program as a model for addressing the shortage, she said. According to the Florida Nurses Association, starting salary for acute care RNs in Miami-Dade and Broward counties is about $40,000. For Rene Rodriguez, a 37-year-old Cuban immigrant, that means lifting a load from his wife, Lioda. He was an epidemiologist and emergency room doctor in Santiago de Cuba; she was an engineer now working as a licensed practical nurse in

South Florida and has been the primary breadwinner for the couple and their 11-year-old son. ''I was prepared as a migrant to start at the bottom,'' said Rodriguez, who transcribes medical records part-time from his home computer. ``I thought I could find a related job at a hospital and I applied everywhere, but I was overqualified and I had no connections.´´ Instead, he stocked grocery shelves and wrestled with the hard reality that he´d probably never again be a doctor. ``People have to pass three boards in order to get a license. After that, you have to get a residency. Hospitals first give them to [graduates of] U.S. universities. . . . And if you are more than 35, you don´t get it.´´

Indeed, said Grossman, some

members of the 2003 graduating class have passed one or more boards, but couldn't get residencies ``and just gave up.´´

Language, she added, can be ''a huge barrier,'' as can certain ego

problems.

'Nursing is simply a different profession. . . . The physician comes in, looks at a patient, then leaves. The nurse is responsible for coordinating care. . . . In the beginning, [students could] rattle off all the test results, then you'd ask, `So where is your patient now?´ They didn´t know.´´

`CULTURAL SHOCK´

Even though students must take at least one ''role transition'' seminar per semester, Cheryl Peterson, a senior policy fellow for the Washington-based American Nurses Association, wonders if they can overcome ''culture shock,'' both professional and national. Some only know ``a national health system and we are focused on money.´´ She also remains skeptical that some aren´t using the FIU program to ´´hopscotch´´ into careers as physicians. ´´I don´t have any guarantee that won´t happen,´´ said Grossman. ``We´ll track them for how long they´ll stay in nursing, but there was a safeguard by not admitting those who had becoming a doctor as a long-term goal.´´ Rene Rodriguez admitted it was a difficult shift, but he has come to understand that American nurses are ``true professionals.´´ The nurse, he noted, ``is the person who does the [patient] assessments. Nurses in other countries don´t do that. You have to know about medications [and] explain the disease process to the patient.´´ Gabriela Said has been working as a monitor technician at North Broward Medical Center in Pompano Beach while retraining. The Romanian-born single mother of two teens spends her nights at a busy nurses´ station on a surgical floor, checking the multicolored blips on computer screens that represent 28 patients´ vital signs. Nearly losing her mother to cancer when she was 16 inspired Said (pronounced Sigh-eed) with an interest in medicine. She left Romania in 1989, as the communist government fell.

She was 26 and had completed medical school. In the United States, she got a job as a maid.

''I was so happy for anything,'' she said. ' I worked for three years like that, [then] somebody said, `You can be a waitress . . .´ I ended up at Rascal House.´´

When she began the FIU program, Said, 41, found herself ``terrified about the physicality of being a nurse. . . . It was a major change in my way of thinking; I was more an individualist and I became more of a team.´´

She has discovered that nursing in America is ``very autonomous, very empowering. . . . It´s a different perspective from a doctor.´´ © 2003 The Miami Herald and wire service sources.

[lee1]

Pilot Program Graduates First Nursing Class Comprised of Foreign

MDs

12/19/2003

Thirty-two foreign physicians on Monday graduated with nursing degrees under a pilot program at Florida International University in Miami, the AP/Washington Times reports. According to the AP/Times, the program offers "a creative solution to a state and national nursing shortage" and provides graduates with "a way of re-entering a field they had been forced to leave behind with their homelands." Dr. Divina Grossman, director of the nursing school at the university, said that foreign-born physician often cannot practice in the United States because of their limited ability to speak English or difficulties with medical board examinations.

Grossman said that the program, which she called the "first of

its kind" in the United States, makes use of the medical backgrounds of immigrants to address the U.S. nursing shortage. A partnership between Tennessee-based hospital chain HCA and a number of other health care facilities provided the $600,000 required to fund the first class under the program, Grossman said. HCA spokesperson Jeff Prescott said, "In general the issue of nurse recruiting is huge," adding, "Anything creative that could be done is being done." The partnership also will fund the second class of

60 students (Roxe, AP/Washington Times, 12/19).

"said that foreign-born physician often cannot practice in the United States because of their limited ability to speak English or difficulties with medical board examinations."

My issue with this is that how do they make sure that these people CAN COMMUNICATE appropriately with patients. We all know that nurses spend much more time with patients than the MDs especially in the hospital setting. American patients already have many commuication difficulties adjusting to the many multicultured nurses that have come into our country. Of course there are always the few multicultured patients who are helped by the other languages/culture that these nurses can bring forward.