Clarice,
You hit the nail on the head. There is a shortage of nurses WILLING TO WORK FOR THE PAY AND CONDITIONS of hospital nursing today. There are too many other options available for smart young men and women today for them to accept the limitations put on them by today's hospitals. This is not to say that the nurse managers aren't doing the most they can with what they have available to them. But, more money needs to come down the pipeline for nurses salaries and to pay for staff to support them. For example, the over 40 nurses might just stay on a few extra years if they didn't have to lift patients. Why are RN's still lifting patients? This could easily be done by young strong lifting teams hired specifically for that purpose that are crosstrained to do other non-nursing tasks. Personally, if I was hired with the understanding that I didn't have to lift anything over, say, 20 lbs, I would be much more inclined to return to hospital nursing. But as it is, its just too risky.
But, getting back to the original subject; if more nurses were willing to work in hospitals (see above), there would be no need to brings in large groups of nurses with foreign training. Unfortunately I don't think that's going to happen any time soon. In the meantime, we do need nurses willing to work there. There are many, many very good (equivalent) nursing programs outside the States but also some not so good ones. If we must have foreign trained nurses we must insist on those only from quality programs with the ability to understand and be understood in both written and spoken English.
