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Essay on Nurses

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As hospitals across the country face a shortage of nurses, two South Jersey hospitals are revisiting a method health systems have used in the past - recruiting nurses from other countries.

Susan Nicolosi, a health-care recruiter at Our Lady of Lourdes Medical Center in Camden, and Grace Corteza, a registered nurse originally from the Philippines, recently went to that Asian nation to sign 26 nurses for two-year commitments. The hope is that they will make South Jersey their home.

"It's a very future-thinking thing," Nicolosi said after her return. "We are looking down the road. This nursing shortage is just going to get worse."

Underwood-Memorial Hospital in Woodbury has contracted with a recruitment service to help …show more content…

It can try to lure RNs away from retirement. It can recruit soon-to-be-graduated nurses. And, it can look abroad.

"Hospitals do feel that there are resources out there in foreign countries and they are using that to address the nursing shortage," Moon said. "The problem is the process can be cumbersome."

NJHA is surveying the state's hospitals about their overseas recruitment efforts. It wants to identify their biggest immigration hurdles and, hopefully, help cut them down to size.

Federal immigration rules can mean a year or more between the time a foreign nurse agrees to work in New Jersey and the time he or she arrives.

Nicolosi said she expects it will take at least 10 months before the men and women she signed will be working at Lourdes.

"My job now is to keep enthusiasm up," she said.

The nurses are getting the electronic red carpet treatment, trading e-mails with their future supervisors and Nicolosi.

Competition is fierce for Filipino nurses, who have advanced degrees and are courted by recruiters from the United Kingdom and Saudi Arabia.

Richard C. Bellamente, the director of community relations at Underwood, says the nurses who've come to work at his hospital are highly skilled. Eight are working as RNs and three are on their way to passing the exam required for licensure. Just as important, he said, the nurses have been able to assimilate easily into a culture quite different from their own.

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