Jobless New RN’s, Immigration And The Global Nursing Shortage
Despite global nursing shortage, the new nursing graduates in the US often find it difficult to get hired. Most of the nursing jobs which are open require that candidates have at least one year of nursing experience – something which new graduate nurses do not have. Although there are plenty of jobs waiting to be filled, new graduate nurses aren’t qualified for most of them.
Very few employers are willing to hire new grads because they are more expensive to train. Their lack of experience requires they be supervised by a preceptor, and with the current global nursing shortage and the high turnover rate of staff, rarely is an experienced nurse available to take on the additional duties of training a new nurse.
Rather than investing the time and resources in these newly minted nursing graduates from US schools, many cost-conscious employers are opting to hire foreign trained nurses who already have experience in the field. Despite there being a global nursing shortage, employers are willing to recruit nurses from other countries to help meet the demand for nurses who already have experience.
Foreign nurses who migrate to the US site the higher salaries being offered to them as compared to what they are making in their native countries and the wider range of job opportunities for both themselves and their families as reasons for making the move. Immigration of foreign nurses is a side effect of the global nursing shortage which leads to a phenomenon referred to as “brain drain,” where those with the best education are leaving their native countries.
There are no easy solutions to the global nursing shortage. As schools in the US are increasing enrollment and educating more nurses, if new graduates are unable to gain on-the-job experience, the demand for professionally trained candidates who are eligible to fill the job openings available will continue to be greater than the supply.
Recruiting foreign trained nurses may be a temporary, less expensive solution in the short-term, but the resulting “brain drain” of the nurses’ native countries will likely exacerbate the international nursing shortage further.