Healthcare travel — offering nurses big money,
nice weather and adventure

Foreign headhunters find a receptive audience in Canadian nurses

By Jessica Werb

Denise DeBergalis, a chatty young recruiter, is poised at the booth of American Mobile Healthcare, North America's largest travel nursing agency. "We staff in all 50 states, the Virgin Islands and the UK," she cheerfully explains. "Our service includes travel reimbursements, and we pay for your NCLEX (National Council of State Boards of Nursing) test and working visa screen. We also pay for all housing, and for medical and dental life insurance."

That's the sort of promise that helped Jenny Besser, 32, make the decision to abandon the winters of snowy Montreal for a travel nursing contract in sunny California, back in 2001. Hers is the kind of experience you might expect to read about in Healthcare Traveler — a magazine solely devoted to travelling nurses and allied healthcare professionals.

After four months in California, she moved to New Jersey, and a couple of months later, she was in New York City, where she now resides with her American husband and works at a permanent position in the city.

ADVENTURES IN CAREGIVING
"It's a great opportunity for somebody young and single," she says. "Had I not got engaged, I probably would have done more travelling ... You can even go overseas to other countries, depending on what agency you go with. I was there with a friend, and we did a lot of other travelling. We were working in LA, and we visited Las Vegas and San Diego."

According to Jacob Cordoba, Chief Operating Officer of Interstaff, another American travel nursing agency with a presence at the career fair, the demand for travel nurses is only going to increase.

"Every industrialized country out there is facing a shortage of nurses, with the exception of Spain," he says. "The US is going to have an appetite for nurses for the next 10 years. There are 200,000 nursing jobs today, and there will be over 700,000 in the next five years. Schools can't keep up with it — they can't find enough teachers to teach the nurses. We're forced to go outside [the country to recruit]."

OUR OWN WOUNDS TO NURSE
However, it's not as though Canada has nurses to spare. According to the International Council of Nurses, Canada will need at least 10,000 nursing graduates each year through 2011 to meet its future needs. But as of 2001, we were graduating only about half that number. And don't expect these graduates to stay put either. A study by the Registered Nurses Association of British Columbia, for example, surveyed new graduate registered nurses in 2004. It found that nearly one in 10 nurses surveyed planned to leave — either for another province or another country. However, that's an improvement; in 2002, that number was 24%, and in 2001, it was 19%.

Ann Dewar, assistant professor at the University of British Columbia's school of nursing, says that travelling nurses aren't putting as large a dent in our nursing staff as one might think — because Canada has its fair share of visiting nurses, too. "People in Canada also offer opportunities to come here. It's not a one-way situation," she points out, adding that most travelling nurses eventually return home. "People leave and come back — young nurses have done this for years."

CAVEAT LABOUR
However, travel nursing isn't always a one-way ticket to sun, sea, sand and fortune. One nursing professional, speaking off the record, noted that some travel nurses are used as 'strike breakers,' and anyone considering such a move should research their options carefully.

For Ms Besser and her friend, however, the decision to go was a no-brainer. "The pay was double the amount that I was making in Montreal, plus my living expenses were covered." As Mr Cordoba puts it: "the reality is, nurses are going to go where the money is." This ought to worry Canadian doctors and patients who are feeling the nurse shortage pinch.