Nursing shortage and migration

PICNICRN, BSN, RN · Aug 25, 2008

Maybe this site will help??? I dunno.

http://www.intlnursemigration.org/

Good luck!

BinkieRN, BSN, RN · Aug 25, 2008

Hi all,
I am interested in doing a research about nursing shortage and migration but I am looking for nurses’ migration policy to USA. I don’t know how to find it? Can anyone help me?
I appreciate it.
sAm

The International Centre For Nurse Migration

http://www.intlnursemigration.org/

Also some good info here

http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/577527_5

The Right to Work and the Right to Practice. Professionally active nurses are important players in an increasingly competitive and global labor market. Unable to meet domestic need and demand, many industrialized countries are looking abroad for a solution to their workforce shortages; the magnitude of current international recruitment is unprecedented (ICN, 2005).

For nurses to practice their profession internationally, they need to meet both professional standards and migration criteria. The right to practice, e.g., to hold a license or registration, a professional criteria, and the right to work, e.g. to hold a work permit, a migration criteria, are sometimes linked. Yet they often require a different set of procedures with a distinct set of competent authorities.

In the interest of public safety, nurses' qualifications must be screened in a systematic way to ensure they meet the minimum professional standards of the country where they are to deliver care. This may be in the form of a paper screen, for example automatic recognition of qualifications received from a given country or school; tests, such as the NCLEX licensing exam; supervised clinical practice, as seen in an adaptation period; and/or successful completion of an orientation course/program.

Language is a crucial vehicle for the vital communication needed both between the patient and care provider, and also between members of the health team. It is not surprising that in many countries, a nurse's right to practice is limited if the foreign-educated nurse's language skills do not support safe care practices. Passing specific language tests are required in certain countries. In others, the employer is held responsible for ascertaining the language competence of the employees/health professionals. Clearly, history has demonstrated a tendency for migrant flows to be the strongest between source and destination countries that share a common language (Kingma, 2006). For example, nurses wishing to migrate from Morocco will tend to go to France while nurses from Ghana will be attracted by the United Kingdom. As the pools of nurses willing to migrate change, and as language competency becomes a professional advancement requirement, language barriers may prove to be less of a constraint, and we may see Chinese nurses working in Ireland and Korean nurses going to the US.

Foreign nurses also need to meet national security and immigration criteria in-order-to enter the country and to stay on a permanent or temporary basis, with or without access to employment. There is no doubt that nurse mobility will be affected by national security concerns and decisions on how fluid the borders will be maintained. For example a tightening of border restrictions after terrorism attacks or the opening of borders with new economic agreements, such as the expansion of the European Union, will continue to influence nurse migration patterns.

Negotiations to facilitate the temporary employment of foreign healthcare workers through the introduction of the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) have not progressed. The future impact of this agreement on global nurse mobility is therefore unclear(ICN, 2005: WHO, 2006). On the other hand, mutual recognition agreements that allow for automatic re-accreditation and that are often linked to an economic cooperation have encouraged nurse migration at the regional level. Examples of such agreements include Protocol II of the Caribbean Community and Common Market (CARICOM), the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the Trans-Tasman Agreement, and Nursing Directives of the European Union.