Irish hospitals and health service providers urgently need to develop a corporate strategy to manage the successful integration of foreign nursing staff, who now account for about 10 per cent of those working in the profession, a conference heard yesterday.
The conference entitled The Profession of Nursing: Acknowledging the Past, Welcoming the Futureheard details of an 18- month study carried out for the Mercy University Hospital (MUH) in Cork, which recruited some 100 foreign nurses in 2005 to fill a 25 per cent shortage of staff.
According to MUH director of nursing, Mary Dunnion, the study, which was carried out by the late Dr Elizabeth Dunne of the department of applied psychology at UCC, was the first of its kind to be carried out into the pace of integration of foreign nurses into an Irish hospital.
Ms Dunnion told the conference that of the 100 nurses recruited by MUH over a six-month period commencing in September 2005, 77 came from the Philippines with the remaining 23 coming from India
Of these 100 nurses, 12 per cent already met the Irish registration requirements, with the remaining 88 per cent requiring adaptation. Some 7 per cent failed adaptation while a further 5 per cent failed during probation, with another 4 per cent leaving for family reasons.
The study involved interviews with both foreign and Irish nurses and identified problems in areas such as professional nursing competencies, with many of the foreign nurses more used to a doctor-led medical service where they were less involved in decision making.
Ms Dunnion said that the study highlighted issues such as language difficulties and intercultural integration, with some foreign nurses reporting feelings of racial discrimination and not being trusted, though this did improve over the 18 months.
"From our contact with other hospitals, it is reasonable to extrapolate from this research that integration is a serious issue to be addressed throughout the Irish health sector," said Ms Dunnion, adding the study found that foreign recruitment was likely to continue for decades.