Laura Messineo, WorldWide Health Staff Solutions Chief Nursing Officer, has worked in the profession for 34 years, and said many nurses with decades of experience are leaving the field and there are not enough nursing schools in the United States to train their replacements. Many of these, she added, have several unfilled faculty positions.
“There have also been many new roles that have been developed outside of the traditional brick and mortar hospital settings that are drawing nurses out of the acute care setting, and more so into the spa realm,” she added.
Messineo believes current nursing school graduates lack the critical thinking skills that seasoned nurses possess. The association says Indiana currently has nearly 4,300 hundred job openings each year for nurses and would need to graduate an additional 1,300 hundred nurses every year until 2030 to meet the state’s current needs.
Most healthcare systems are tapping into international talent as a long-term strategy to adequately staff their hospitals. Nurses desiring work in the U.S. can upload their resume. The information is reviewed to determine the applicant’s clinical specialty. And then an assessment is done to validate their understanding of that specialty, followed by an interview with a hiring manager. Messineo said the nurse must meet the requirements for the position.
“The nurses that we’re recruiting and bringing over to the United States are nurses that have passed the U.S. standard of an NCLEX exam,” she continued. “They also passed an English language exam of reading, writing and comprehension and they are BSN graduates.”
Messineo added that nurses are recruited from 17 countries – the top three are the Philippines, Canada, and the United Kingdom. They have, on average, nine to 15 years of experience and work in every clinical specialty area in a hospital setting.
