June 12, 2001

Washington: Indian nurses who wish to work abroad have one more option now. In the US there are openings for tens of thousands of nurses.

The situation has reached such a pass that hospitals in the Washington area have offered a private recruiter one million dollars in fees to deliver 235 foreign nurses within a month, the Washington Post reports.

These hospitals are hiring freelancers and paying them 70 dollars an hour (Rs 3200) to fill up more than 3,000 vacancies.

Six Washington area hospitals have held ten job fairs in Britain and the Philippines and managed to secure commitments for more than 700 nurses.

A survey of 715 of the 5000 hospitals found 1,26,00 job openings for nurses, American Hospital association reported last week.

Full time nurses are paid 25 dollars an hour (Rs 1150), much higher than the wages paid to them in developing countries like India. As the average age of retirement for nurses is 45, hospital executives say they have no choice but to look overseas.

For the US and British hospitals, the hunt for nurses often begins in the Philippines, where colleges turn out more nurses than its hospitals can employ.

Filipino nurses are well received in the US because they are trained at nursing schools where the curriculum is similar to the US universities.

UNI