Nurses angered by foreign recruiting

CHARLOTTESVILLE – Nurses at the University of Virginia Medical Center are angry about the university’s ongoing recruitment of nurses from foreign countries.

The hospital has already hired 12 nurses from as far away as Australia and South Africa, and it plans to hire more. Hospital spokesman Peter Jump said the efforts overseas are necessary to maintain adequate staffing in a highly competitive market.

“We are always trying to recruit good nurses from wherever we can, both domestically and internationally,” Jump told The Daily Progress of Charlottesville.

“There is a national nursing shortage,” Jump said, and many of the 200 domestic applicants for nursing jobs the hospital has received don’t meet experience needs.

But union leaders and nurses don’t agree, and said talk that the hospital is paying a recruiting company $18,500 for each foreign nurse hired only makes it worse.

“It’s a ridiculous waste of money,” said Jan Cornell, president of the staff union at the university. “I think they could find nurses in the United States.”

Jump said he didn’t know what hospital is paying the recruitment company, but estimated the cost for the overseas hires is about equivalent to that of recruiting an American nurse. The nurses also will earn the same salaries as other new hires, depending on experience, will not receive the normal sign-on bonus of $2,500, but will receive relocation expenses, such as airfare and money to ship their belongings.

Those costs, Jump said, also are about the same.

The 12 new hires are coming from the Philippines, India, Ireland, Jamaica, Australia and South Africa. Nine of them are expected to begin arriving between October and June. The other three will arrive from India between June 2005 and July 2006.

“This is not an unusual thing,” Jump said. “Hospitals do this all the time.”

Concerns among current nurses that language barrier, techniques on procedures and other cultural difference will present challenges also are unwarranted, Jump said.

Foreign nurses have to pass the English as a Second Language test and the U.S. exam for licensure, he said, giving them the same set of qualifications as American nurses.

Nonetheless, Cornell called it “insulting” that the hospital spent almost $250,000 to recruit nurses when “per diem” nurses will see pay cuts as high as $20 per hour under a revised per diem wage scale. The change goes into effect in November, and the university has claimed some per diem nurses will get pay increases because of it.

The hospital employs about 1,500 nurses and has a vacancy rate on par with the national average of about 13 percent, officials said. Roughly one in five nurses is employed on a per diem basis, meaning they get no health benefits or retirement plans, but can sign up for shifts they want to work and can be paid up to $50 per hour.