Nurse Migration Essay

International migration of nurses is on the rise in the recent decades due to rapid globalization. Nursing profession is considered to be a mobile profession as thousands of nurses every year move from one country to other for better future career, social security, and professional development (Kingma, 2007). So, in 21st century nurse migration is a national as well as a global issue. Studies show that most of the developed and industrialized countries are confronting a critical shortage of health care workers in general and nurses in particular in these days (Walani, 2015). Those countries, including Canada, are recruiting Internationally Educated Nurses (IENs) to meet the health care needs for their population. A Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI) shows overall 8.6% registered nurses working in Canada were graduated outside of Canada (2011).

Current trend of nurse migration is from the developing and under developed countries of Asia and Africa to the industrialized and developed countries like U.S.A., Canada, Australia, and

316). A report mentions that the IENs have less confidence in providing culturally competent care to the patients of the different culture due to lack of understanding of health beliefs, value and behaviors of that culture (Lampley, 2008). For instance, in Philippines, most of the decisions are made by the doctors and nurses just follow doctors’ order in decisions making (Tregunno, et al., 2009). But in Canada nurses are required to be more assertive and actively involved in decision-making and have more responsibility and accountability regarding patient care. Further, Canada is a multicultural country and it respects and upholds all cultural rights equally. So, a nurse, who is from a country with homogeneous culture, has difficulty to deal considering diverse cultural values of the patients in