Survey: Should nurses from other countries be recruited to aid in the nursing shortag

Nurses General Nursing

Published

  1. Should nurses from other countries be recruited to aid in the nursing shortage?

    • 149
      Yes
    • 514
      No

663 members have participated

This month's survey Question:

Should nurses from other countries be recruited to aid in the nursing shortage?

Please take a minute to take answer our survey and please feel free to reply to this topic to post any comments that you may have on the topic.

Specializes in Medical-Surgical.
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Bottom line: every time we bring a foreign nurse into the US to fill the gap here, many patients in their home countries go without care. EVERY SINGLE TIME.

From where I am now, there are too many nurses here . So, it doesn't apply to us. :p

This NURSING SHORTAGE is 'R.E.A.L.', those who claim it is less than real are not in touch with the reality from the EMPLOYER'S side of the fence. If I could have recruited BSN nurses from overseas, I could have placed EVERY ONE of them. Due to I.N.S. efficiency, this was not practicle. I offered 140% of the average hourly rate in my market and still could not 'recruit' nurses. Sign-on and completion completion bonuses along with 100% company paid benefits are not enough. MORE nurses is the answer. Many hospitals have resorted to partnering with Agencies in an effort to recoup agency nurse expenses in the form of return on investment. This stifles the market and depresses compensation and benefits further hindering an already difficult job of recruiting and RETENTION. For those who argue that no nursing shortage exists, SHOW ME THE NURSES!, otherwise your claims are falling on deaf ears and add nothing but angst to this debate and issue. If you have REAL WORLD solutions, lets hear them!

Like I said, REALLY recruiting nurses from right here in America, and even more so, making school a reality, through more grants, scholarships, working as you attend, etc... Of course there is a nursing shortage, but lets look here 1st.

This NURSING SHORTAGE is 'R.E.A.L.', those who claim it is less than real are not in touch with the reality from the EMPLOYER'S side of the fence. If I could have recruited BSN nurses from overseas, I could have placed EVERY ONE of them. Due to I.N.S. efficiency, this was not practicle. I offered 140% of the average hourly rate in my market and still could not 'recruit' nurses. Sign-on and completion completion bonuses along with 100% company paid benefits are not enough. MORE nurses is the answer. Many hospitals have resorted to partnering with Agencies in an effort to recoup agency nurse expenses in the form of return on investment. This stifles the market and depresses compensation and benefits further hindering an already difficult job of recruiting and RETENTION. For those who argue that no nursing shortage exists, SHOW ME THE NURSES!, otherwise your claims are falling on deaf ears and add nothing but angst to this debate and issue. If you have REAL WORLD solutions, lets hear them!
Specializes in Medical-Surgical.
Like I said, REALLY recruiting nurses from right here in America, and even more so, making school a reality, through more grants, scholarships, working as you attend, etc... Of course there is a nursing shortage, but lets look here 1st.

The question is: Is the US government crazy enough to fund all those students who want to go to nursing? I don't think so. With the high attrition rate going in nursing schools and for those who work already, nobody would invest in this kind of venture.

Here in the Philippines, our government benefits a lot from remittances of our overseas workers which include nurses and yet they didn't even spent single cent for our education. :p

Of course not! The US government would never flat out pay for all the nursing students!

The question is: Is the US government crazy enough to fund all those students who want to go to nursing? I don't think so. With the high attrition rate going in nursing schools and for those who work already, nobody would invest in this kind of venture.

Here in the Philippines, our government benefits a lot from remittances of our overseas workers which include nurses and yet they didn't even spent single cent for our education. :p

Specializes in Critical care.

The bringing in of foriegn nurses would not fix the nursing shortage. What needs to be done is for administration, hospitals, clinics and the doctors that use and need the nurses to get a clue as to what it is like in the nursing trenches and to help out and keep or retain the staff we already have. Recruiting and new nurses from more schools will only bandaide the problem, it must be resolved in the root of the problem or nursing will become an extinct proffession.:o

I feel the need to reply to LALPN,my dear I truly respect your response. But guess what? the truth HURTS"""".I am glad that I joined this forum. I am not a person that critize other peoples decor or food when I go to their houses.I am speaking from the heart. I have good practical experience in nursing and a very lengthy theory background as well.I worked two part-time jobs to pay for my tutition and while I was attending school I was having children at the same time.I wrote my finals on a monday and went to hospital the following day to have my daughter. I speak of what I know. Maybe you need that extra push to get a little further. But as I have said, I am enjoying this forum. This topic is very interesting. I dont get personal on my replies. I wrote on the responses that I have read. So my dear keep heart Foreign nurses are in your country to stay.Blame NAFTA not us. And maybe that Canadian Travel nurse was not all that bad, But having to work with people who do not want him/her in their environment can also make things worse. I am very sure that most times people just dont want to discuss their private lives to others. May be that's why you could not figure her /him out. Stand to reason that you are actually wearing the shoe on the same "foot"

one that goes into other peoples house and critize their decor and their food.

keep your responses coming I am Loving this...........

Specializes in Medical-Surgical.
Of course not! The US government would never flat out pay for all the nursing students!

Then, who will? Not corporate America. Not the hospitals and not any big business firms would invest, like grants or scholarship, in the education of American nurses.

The truth is, hiring of foreign nurses is easier than investing in the education of american nurses. By the way, those foreign nurses are BSN. :p

Our government would not be crazy to educate more Americans to be nurses. If we bring nurses from other countries it would put a patch on the problem, but not solve it. We have many who work two and three jobs to make ends meet, if we made it easier for them to be nurses, it would change their way of life and that of their families. We also have many high tech jobs that have disappeared to other countries. They already have some advanced degrees.

They could be retrained to be nurses.

It may sound a little catty, but maybe instead of sending money to foreign countries with their hands out, we should invest in those already here.

You do not just retrain someone to be a nurse. It takes a certain personality to be a nurse, and those of you that think that you aer just going to go into it for the money, think again. It can be quite hard on you and will be on many of you. Look at the drop out rates from the nursing students that are currently in school, and look at how many posts are from students that have gotten accepted but have no idea as to what it is like to be a nurse.

What do you think the percentage is going to be of nurses that have graduated just now and will be in the field in 5 years. And not leave because of work conditions.............I never had bad work condtions where ever I worked in the US as a nurse and that was for a long time.

A foreign nurse, no matter what you say, is a given commodity. They have already graduated nursing school with a BSN, have passes NCLEX before even coming to the US, plus a full set of English exams. They are able to work right away. Look at the number of new grads who are flunking NCLEX the first time, and time after that. Should a hopsital invest in them, when it may be years before they can actually work? There is no guarantee that anyone will stay in nursing just because you pay for school for them.......

(dontcha just love it when somebody posts that they don't get personal in their replies, and then they ID somebody by name and go for their throat??? :chuckle )

The US government already has a great scholarship program which is NEED BASED. That means if you are among the most disadvantaged, you can get help. If you have means, you are expected to do it yourself. This is very American. Those of us who are blessed with resources tend to get resentful about it, but it really is the fairest way to distribute resources.

We will continue to have foreign nurses flooding in as long as the foreign nurses are willing to put up with what we will not put up with, and if they will work for less than we will work for. We have seen this happen in other fields and professions.

I don't have a problem with individual differences, I figure my grandparents were foreign when they came here, and pretty much everybody who is here had an ancestor who came from somewhere else if you go back far enough. (Even the "Native Americans" came from north Asia when there was a land bridge.)

There will always be people who are intolerant of persons from other cultures. I personally find other cultures fascinating, but that's me. Where it gets stuck in my craw is when patient care suffers. If I had not seen it, frequently, with my own unbelieving eyes, I would not even bring it up.

Where things will change is when there are enough problems that enough patients are getting substandard care that even the hospitals will not be willing to tolerate the liability (and I'm talking business liability here--competition can be stiff). Caring is a significant part of our profession and like it or not, it is a part of western culture. Caring does not hold the same place in some other cultures.

I'm for everybody having enough. I want all patients to get good care from caring nurses. I want all of us to be happy. But the fact is, I don't always get what I want.

I do not believe that bringing in foreign nurses will ease the nursing shortage. I believe it will ease hospitals' hiring problems and staff to patient ratios. The nursing shortage will continue until working conditions are better and nurses get a bigger share of the goodies. Hospitals, doctors and insurance companies are raking it in, and nurses are burning out. And part of decreasing burnout is making sure the employee feels adequately compensated. It is a big part of what makes nursing "worth" it. I can be loving and caring anywhere for free.....

This is not a new story.

You said it all!

(dontcha just love it when somebody posts that they don't get personal in their replies, and then they ID somebody by name and go for their throat??? :chuckle )

The US government already has a great scholarship program which is NEED BASED. That means if you are among the most disadvantaged, you can get help. If you have means, you are expected to do it yourself. This is very American. Those of us who are blessed with resources tend to get resentful about it, but it really is the fairest way to distribute resources.

We will continue to have foreign nurses flooding in as long as the foreign nurses are willing to put up with what we will not put up with, and if they will work for less than we will work for. We have seen this happen in other fields and professions.

I don't have a problem with individual differences, I figure my grandparents were foreign when they came here, and pretty much everybody who is here had an ancestor who came from somewhere else if you go back far enough. (Even the "Native Americans" came from north Asia when there was a land bridge.)

There will always be people who are intolerant of persons from other cultures. I personally find other cultures fascinating, but that's me. Where it gets stuck in my craw is when patient care suffers. If I had not seen it, frequently, with my own unbelieving eyes, I would not even bring it up.

Where things will change is when there are enough problems that enough patients are getting substandard care that even the hospitals will not be willing to tolerate the liability (and I'm talking business liability here--competition can be stiff). Caring is a significant part of our profession and like it or not, it is a part of western culture. Caring does not hold the same place in some other cultures.

I'm for everybody having enough. I want all patients to get good care from caring nurses. I want all of us to be happy. But the fact is, I don't always get what I want.

I do not believe that bringing in foreign nurses will ease the nursing shortage. I believe it will ease hospitals' hiring problems and staff to patient ratios. The nursing shortage will continue until working conditions are better and nurses get a bigger share of the goodies. Hospitals, doctors and insurance companies are raking it in, and nurses are burning out. And part of decreasing burnout is making sure the employee feels adequately compensated. It is a big part of what makes nursing "worth" it. I can be loving and caring anywhere for free.....

This is not a new story.

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