To: Ministry of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada
To: Ministry of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada
From: Uvbi Osatohangbon
Date: Nov. 27/2022
Subject: Proposal to Increase the Number of Immigrant Nurses
Summary
Schools have presently begun graduating enough nurses to prevent future job deficiencies, partly due to the increasing demand for nurses. However, the National Health Service (2011) states that 10,000 nurses retire each year. The number is expected to increase by 40,000 new nurses every year by 2025 (Sephel, 2011) due to the unsatisfactory staff levels nurses are being subjected to. A solution that can help improve this current problem is increasing the number of immigrant nurses.
The study organized by Baumann and his associates shows that Canadian-born applicants or applicants with Canadian experience are often favored over immigrant job applicants who frequently end up being overlooked (2021). This study has found that the education, work experience, and skills of immigrants are in many cases ignored, undervalued, or not accurately assessed by those that oversee hiring. It is critical for healthcare organizations to learn to value and produce diversity in their practices and cultures, to be able to provide a solution to the present shortage of healthcare workers.
Problem
Burnout, shortage of residency programs, transition shock, lack of training support available, doubts about one’s own abilities and difficulty adapting to the nursing culture are all things that have contributed to present job shortages in healthcare. Aiken and his associates (2002) observed that when nurses begin to be subjected to unsatisfactory staff levels, they tend to leave their job positions, resulting in the turnover rate for new nurses being high. Earlier published research showed the need for nurses in 2025 to be between 500,000 to 1,000,000 (Sephel, 2011), without including the net of dropouts, retirement, and graduation rates. The growing supply of nurses with an almost complete lack of transition training is an issue that will cause frustration among new graduates, if not solved. This could lead to negative effects on retention and supply; if not taken care of, it could result in a severe and long-term shortage of healthcare workers which will raise the possibility of missed care or patient mortality (Kaihlanen et al., 2020).
Solution
Vision
Increasing professional satisfaction among nurses is essential to maintaining presently experienced nurses. This is not possible if organizations cannot hire more nurses to reduce stress, overwork, and burnout which are factors causing high turnover rates. It is a necessity now more than ever to determine a solution that can solve this problem in a quick manner, to allow for time to fix all the other existing issues that are leading to these turnover rates and increasing levels of job unsatisfaction.
Objectives
I believe that the most efficient approach to the current shortage of healthcare staff would be to increase the number of immigrant nurses. Accordi