US Nursing Licensure through loophole?

Apparently do to the shortage of licensed nurses, Many states are recruiting foreign nurse graduates to come and work in the USA.

One Online University UHSA states that their online RN program is eligible for US licensure. http://www.uhsa.ag/pstudent/general/AS/nursing.htm

Arizona is allowing graduates to apply for and sit for the NCLEX-RN based on graduation from a foreign school.

http://www.azbn.org/Applications.asp

Most states have provisions for foreign graduates.
Caution! This is an amazing possible loophole to getting licensed as an RN in the USA but one should always do their research with the state they plan on getting licensed with!!!

Personally I think an initial nursing degree completed online will lead to difficulties functioning as a new grad RN. Clinical experience is everything!!

 

Having spent the last 3 weeks living at UC San Francisco hospital, in Marina's room, we've met an awful lot of RNs. About 90% (sample of 30) got their training outside the US: roughly 1/3 Ukrainian, and other clusters from Korea, the Philippines, and Ireland, it seems. The skill levels seem quite variable; many have no idea how to deal with a spinal surgery patient, and must be watched closely. And 4 or 5 have accents so strong, we have real problems understanding them. Only a little unsettling for us; we wonder about less-alert patients.

 

Hopefully, you wife recovers without incident.

Many RNs are recruited from Canada and they should all speak English with or without an accent. For years nursing as not considered by many to be a great profession but it seems times are changing. Without nurses the patients would be left in the unqualified hands of the doctors. Now that is scary.

I too would be worried if the nurse attending to me while in hospital was barely understandable due to language difficulties. Usually, patients are not at their most alert whilst in hopsital and it is very easy to misinterpret or mishear something.

 

Friendly point of info: Marina is Dr. Bear's daughter.

 

Friendly, but inaccurate. Marina = wife. Mariah = one of his daughters.

 

My wife has been a nurse for the past 20 years. I've been an educator for a bit longer. In that time, we've seen a dramatic influx of foreign-born nurses.

Recently, the Secretary of Labor decried the fact that we are about 750,000 nurses short in this country. She failed to note, however, that there are about that many non-practicing nurses, men and women who've been RN's, but no longer. The medical field has yet to face up to the conditions they create that cause these shortages. Instead, they search for nurses in foreign countries who will come here for the (much) higher wages. But this is a losing game.

For decades, nursing could claim a stronghold on women wishing to work outside the home. When girls went to college, they often pursued nursing or education, fields more open to them. Well, those days are gone. Education and nursing have to compete for women (and men) with all of the other professions. Well, they're not prepared to do so. The pay isn't good--it's horrible in education; in nursing, it's tolerable, but not comparable to the amount of education and responsibility thrust upon nurses in today's complex medical environment. So women have been turning away from these two fields for the past 30 years or so. Now, the mean age of nurses is really high--droves will retire over the next decade, with no replacements in sight. In the U.S. at least.

Now, let's look at why nursing is so attractive to foreign-born people. First and foremost, it is a technical field. Medicines, technologies, etc., have little or no cultural basis. It's all about language. (Hospitals recruit nurses trained in English-speaking programs, usually in places like the Phillipines or Africa.) But, as John notes, while these nurses can, technically, speak English, they're often hard to understand.

My wife is trained in the U.S., with a BSN from an NLN-accredited school. She spent 9 years in the Air Force, and another 11 as a nurse in the civilian sector. She's managed units, including L&D, Post-partum, Same-day Surgery, and Emergency Services. In a couple of months, she'll wrap up her MSN as a Family Nurse Practitioner and leave nursing for good. And who will replace her? See above. Believe me, she can't wait to get out, and for good reason. And that goes for almost every one of her peers who's been a nurse for a while. "The future's not bright; you better wear gloves."

 

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What I think is sad, is that many US nursing schools have 3+ year waiting lists for students to enter, yet we are hiring 1000's of foreign nurses. Go figure!

 

Oops, sorry. I actually knew that. What threw me was the hospital reference. I seem to think Mariah was hospitalized recently.

 

Re: ?/comment

Bush says we need those immigrants because Americans don't want to do those jobs. Ya. Right.

How come no one ever mentions that Americans can't just take any job once they've paid a premium for the education to get that job? Hello?!!!!

And the media hardly ever shows any field but farming when they focus on immigration and jobs in America.

But I'm just a craaaazy liberal!!!

 

Re: ?/comment

In followup to this comment and the comments of Mr. Douglas above, one of the major reasons for the current US nursing supply crisis is a lack of instructors to staff the US nursing schools. This is a subject of heavy discussion in the nursing community right now.

There are simply not enough graduate-trained nurses willing and able to serve as nursing school faculty. Most graduate-trained nurses are able to make more money at the bedside or other nursing tasks then as a instructor or professor at a nursing school.

For reasons unclear to me, the salaries of nursing school faculty have not kept pace with some of the other disciplines, making it all the more difficult to recruit for those positions.

 

...

Perhaps the US Schools should hire foreign nurse educators. Ha!

 

In regards to online nurse education

What is your opinion in regards to foreign online schools offering a nursing education to entry level U.S. student nurses? This means the U.S. student can go to a foreign nursing school without leaving home! Of course when completed with the program, they are considered foreign nurse graduates.

It appears to be an attempt to take advantage of recruiting students who are sick of the long waiting lists U.S. schools have.

Comments?

 

Two personal observations about remarks made in this thread:
RE: The "Shortage" of US nurses; in my field (Engineering) I've noticed that many firms will require an applicant to have a valid passport (even if the position doe not erquire travel) and in some cases, will require an H-1 Visa (not available to US citizens) prior to the interview. Then many of these firms will offer a person with Masters level education and 5-10 years experience in the field, a salary of $20,000 to 30,000 a year. These firms can then petition the US government to allow them to hire more foreign workers because they "cannot find qualified US citizens".
RE: The language difficulty in hospitals; I had a Triple Bypass a couple of years ago (What Bill Clinton had a few months back) Very few of the hospital staff spoke English to any recognizable degree. They tried to shave my LEGS for an open CHEST surgery. My wife explained it to them in Spanish, but it could have been a disaster in the making. (The Doctor is from India.) I can now see how the wrong leg gets amputated, etc, that one reads about in the news.
Best wishes for a speedy recovery to Dr Bear's family.

 

Rich douglas wrote, "In a couple of months, she'll wrap up her MSN as a Family Nurse Practitioner and leave nursing for good".
I am afraid there is a dichotomy in this statement because she will be advancing her career in nursing by leaving bedside care and becoming an advanced practice nurse. When one gets a masters in a discipline, in her case Nursing, one is specializing in this field rather than leaving it altogether.
Let me explain, Advanced Practice Nursing is a term used to describe the nursing interventions of a licensed registered nurse prepared at the graduate degree level. The APN title includes:
· Clinical Nurse Specialists
· Nurse Practitioners
· Certified Nurse Midwives
· Registered Nurse Anesthetists
A Nurse Practitioner (NP) has advanced training in diagnosing and treating illness. Nurse Practitioners prescribe medications, treat illness, and administer physical exams. NPs differ from physicians in that they focus on prevention, wellness, and education. NPs specialize in providing all encompassing individualized care using a Nursing model rather than a medical model. Most NPs specialize in particular areas of health care such as family, adult, women health or pediatric.
As a matter a fact, a NP is required to maintain her/his RN license and she/he is allowed to work as a RN or NP. IN many states they are required to have a collaboration agreement with a physician and prescription authority is limited sometimes. I am happy to say that my states is one of the few where NP’s can work independently and they are granted full prescriptive authority.
Since I am a nurse and a MSN/FNP student, I couldn’t resist replying to your post.

Best regards
Pancho

 

I cannot resist not responding to this thread from the aspect of foreign English bashing. Most Africans, Philippines, India and other English speaking countries speak the English language perfectly well. The same may not be true of non English speaking countries.
What I found in many Americans is when one does not speak with the accent they are familiar with they tend to brand that individual not understandable. A southern nurse is difficult to understand in New England and vice versa. If Ross Perot was a nurse, he would be difficult to understand in New England. The issue is whether a nurse receives the proper training.

Americans do not take their time to understand other people's accent. Accent is not inability to speak a language. It just means they speak the language with fairly different pronunciations and variables that are also present even within the American society. There are many Americans who would not understand British speaking nurses. I think American should try to understand other people's English speaking accent instead of knocking it down. In many cases, those branded unable to speak good English actually speak the language properly - more so than many Americans.

That said, I think Americans should do more to train nurses than importing them.

Happy New Year everybody.

 

a'right y'all -- there is a real differnce 'tween a southern accent and a yankee 'un

Even so, I can go anywhere in the United States and be understood fairly well with my southern accent. Though if I let it be heard too strongly, I will immediately be branded an uneducated, rednecked, hillbilly.

Them yankees come down 'ere speaking N'Jersey and N'York an I understan them'ns pretty as ya please if'n they'd jus' slow down a bit.

The point being made is that some people who come to the United States do not have the language skills required to communicate effectively. This can be corrected through education and training but these same non-native speakers do not make an effort to do so.

Were I to move to Italy in order to teach in a music conservatory there, would anyone argue that my students need to learn to speak english? Of course not, I'd need to learn Italian and to learn it well.

In my 18 years in the Army I had the pleasure of traveling around the world a bit. I found that the citizens of each country I visited had as much tolerence of my poor German, Spanish, Arabic, Taiwanese, and European English as most Americans have for those who speak poor english here.

Let's not try to pretend that this is some issue unique to the United States and that Americans need to be more accepting. This is a universal issue, when communicating in a professional setting we expect to understand and to be understood. It's that simple.

 

Very true. A recent investigation in California found many hospitals not in compliance with a state law restricting the number of patients that can be assigned to a single nurse per shift.

The legal limit is 6 patients, many hospitals were found to be routinely exceeding (even doubling or more) that amount. They cry "shortages!" but most nurses know it's more often about cost containment. Some of the worst offending hospitals charged as a result of the investigation admitted that in a round-about way. Their first response was that they could not afford the cost of limiting patient assignments to 6 per nurse per shift.

The nurses understand cost containment needs, but think it should be done in other areas (top-heavy administration perhaps) rather than cutting costs in areas that directly compromise patient care.

Kit

 

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So true. It is common for nurses to earn in excess of $70,000 per year. It is not common for them to do so teaching at colleges and universities.

 

Yeah we do

That's true. In fact, I'd say that the U. S. of A. is fairly tolerant in this respect. But it doesn't mean some of Americans couldn't do even better