Sunday, May 28, 2006
Editorial: An unhealthy remedy for a nursing shortage
Senate immigration bill to the world: Keep your tired and your poor. Send nurses.
From the RoundTable blog
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The United States faces a critical shortage of registered nurses; however, Congress must temper its temptation to meet the demand by raiding poorer countries for health care workers.
A provision in the Senate-backed immigration bill lifts restrictions on the number of foreign-born nurses and their family members gaining visas to work in the United States.
Insourcing nurses could help offset the growing need here. But it helps neither the 150,000 qualified Americans turned away each year from nursing schools for lack of openings, nor the diseased and suffering in poorer countries desperately attempting to build health care networks.
Congress could take a more practical approach to alleviating the nursing shortage experienced at home and abroad by offering incentives for nurses to teach others. The New York Times reports the nation's 1,100 nursing schools turn away qualified applicants because they lack enough faculty. Those who teach nursing don't earn as much as those who practice nursing. A government program tailored to raise the pay of nursing professors could offset this deficiency and boost the stream of new nurses.
Not only would hospitals and health care agencies benefit with an ongoing and growing stream of American nurses, so, too, would other countries that lose thousands of their nurses to the lure of higher U.S. paychecks.
Between 12,000 and 14,000 nurses, primarily from the Philippines and India, each year seek employment in the U.S., accentuating the shortage in their home countries. The Times reports most Filipinos die without medical attention, unchanged in 30 years, and that increasingly more women give birth without the help of a doctor or nurse.
Meanwhile, the U.S. pumps billions of dollars into global health programs and laments that more progress can't be made for the lack of medical personnel in poor countries. Enticing what few nurses there are in these countries to leave for more lucrative jobs in the U.S. runs counter to that mission.
Congress must resist worsening the foreign nursing shortage through the immigration bill.
