By Mata Press Service

Asian nations like India and the Philippines are reporting a growing exodus of nurses as Canada hunts for foreign healthcare workers with offers of signing bonuses, hefty wages, and better working conditions.

The Canadian Nurses Association (CAN) is predicting the country will be short 60,000 registered nurses by the end of this year while Statistics Canada said vacancies for nurses in has increased by 85.8% over the past two years. The healthcare sector currently represents one in seven vacancies in Canada, which has over one million jobs unfilled as of last month.

Campaigns and policy changes are now under-way in provinces across Canada to attract and retain new Canadian healthcare workers, while colleges and universities are reporting spikes in nursing courses.

British Columbia has announced a $12 million simplified pathway for eligible internationally educated nurses (IEN) to enter the province’s health system. Currently, it takes internationally educated nurses approximately two to six years to become a registered nurse in B.C.

Ontario is deploying internationally trained healthcare professionals, under the supervision of licensed nurses, to work in long-term care and other settings that have been suffering from staff shortages, especially during the pandemic.

The Quebec government meanwhile is investing $65 million to recruit and train about 1,000 foreign nurses to work in seven regions of the province where the nursing shortage is most acute.

“The nursing shortage in Canada has reached critical levels never experienced before due to the severe workloads and stress levels during the pandemic. Employers are clamouring for qualified nurses and in particular foreign-educated nurses,” said Patrick Dang, a veteran Vancouver-based international education expert, who is an advisor to the Indo-Canada Education Council (ICEC).

“Mobile nurses are in demand with many elderly folks are opting to avoid care facilities in fear of the COVID spread of infections and lack of care created by the nursing shortages,” said Dang who is also the president and CEO of SELC, a private language, and careers college in Vancouver.

Based on the demand, SELC college has created 11 unique pathway preparation programs for foreign-trained nurses to be able to qualify for its Post Graduate Nursing programs in Canada. The PGN program is designed to allow foreign nurses to be trained to Canadian standards with a unique one-year Paid Co-Op placement, allowing nurses to train, work and be certified through the NNAS and NCLEX exams for nursing license certifications in both Canada and the USA.

“Nurses In foreign countries will now be able to qualify for immediate acceptance into our Post Graduate Nursing program in countries like Korea, Vietnam, Sri Lanka, Brazil, Mexico, India, Philippines and United Arab Emirates,” said Dang.

“Our new healthcare care nursing campus offering the PGN programs is set to open next month and take in foreign-trained nurses.”

As Canada and other western nations hunt for internationally trained nurses countries like Sri Lanka, India and the Philippines report that their already fragile healthcare systems are facing critical worker shortages.

In Sri Lanka, which is in the midst of its worst economic crisis in history, nurses and healthcare workers are seeking jobs overseas in record numbers to be able to send money home to support their families.

“We have dozens of nurses looking for jobs in Canada…the health ministry is also working on new rules to help the nurses find work overseas,” said Nandana Gunasinghe, who operates the Colombo-based North American University Services (NAUS), which collaborates with Canadian universities and career colleges.

In the Philippines, which is the largest exporter of nurses globally accounting for roughly 25 percent of all overseas nurses worldwide, the healthcare brain drain has become a top priority for the country’s newly minted president.

Nurses and doctors, opting to work as nurses overseas, are leaving the country in droves to earn up to 15 times more than what they would get working in the Philippines, estimates the Manila-based Alliance of Healthcare Workers.

“As this exodus continues, the Philippines is at the losing end because our investments in their human resource development are benefiting other economies,” John Paolo R. Rivera, an economist at the Asian Institute of Management, said BusinessWorld report.

Promising changes, newly installed President Ferdinand R. Marcos Jr. told a media scrum last week that he plans to address the ongoing “nurses exodus.”

“Our nurses are the best in the world. They acquitted themselves with the highest distinction abroad…They are out there because we cannot pay them for the same risk and workload that we have back here,” he said.

India currently has about 1.7 trained nurses per 1,000 people, against the World Health Organization (WHO) norm of 4 nurses per 1,000 people. Poor working conditions and poor pay are the topmost reasons for the annual exodus of nurses from the country, according to the Indian Nursing Council (INC).

Dr Roy K George, national president of the Trained Nurses Association of India (TNAI), told ThePrint: “India produces approximately 200,000 nurses every year, but 40-50 per cent leave the country within two years of graduation. Salaries are really low in the private sector — the big chains give about Rs 300,000 (about C$4,800) per year, in Tier II and III cities it can be as low as Rs 96,000-120,000 (C$1,500 to C$2,000 per year)

The average nurse salary in Canada is $67,696 per year or $34.72 per hour. Entry-level positions start at $52,322 per year, while most experienced workers make up to $82,233 per year.

India is now in need of 4.3 million more nurses by 2024 to meet WHO norms,

“Working conditions are bad and there are no opportunities for career growth. That is why India has emerged as among the largest exporters of nurses,” said Dr. George.

Ironically at the same time, India is mulling a revision in the Indian Nursing Council Act 1947 to allow the registration of foreign nurses with state nursing councils. Currently, foreign nurses and nurses with foreign degrees cannot work in India. – with files from Agencies.