The Caribbean brain drain: Nursing a grievance

[Judi Lynn]

The Caribbean brain drain
Nursing a grievance
Raise wages, or lose staff
Apr 8th 2010 | PORT OF SPAIN | From The Economist print edition

A JAMAICAN nurse, Mary Seacole, cared for British soldiers during the Crimean war in the 1850s. Many more have followed in her footsteps. According to a report last month by the World Bank, almost three-quarters of the nurses who train in the English-speaking Caribbean leave to work in the United States, Britain or Canada. That is causing a problem. Only 7,800 nurses are left in a region with a rapidly ageing population of 6m—and 3,300 unfilled nursing posts. Many rich countries have ten times as many nursing staff per head.

One answer, says the bank, is to train more nurses. There is no shortage of applicants. Countries that recruit them might help by contributing to the costs of nursing education in the Caribbean. But even if the region trained twice as many nurses, hospital wards would still be understaffed by 2025. A few come in from Cuba, India, Nigeria and the Philippines, but most of them quickly move on to North America.

Another answer is to improve pay and conditions. Qualified nurses in Jamaica start on just over $600 a month. The matron of a 500-bed public hospital earns only about three times that amount—or around the same as a trainee nurse in Britain. Three-quarters of Jamaican nurses are fed up with their working conditions, says a survey quoted by the bank. The disillusioned move to other careers as much as to other countries.

Nurses are not allowed to leave before they have repaid their student loans. This restriction rankles, and is ineffective: some recruitment agencies lend Caribbean nurses the money to pay off their debt. Graduates in accountancy or advertising are free to travel, repaying their loans from wherever they choose to settle.

More:
http://www.economist.com/world/americas/displaystory.cfm?story_id=15868387&fsrc=rss

[protocol rv]

1. We also have huge brain drain in Venezuela

pay for doctors in public hospitals was allowed to stay flat as inflation ate into it, which led to thousands of doctors quitting, many left the country. I don't think as many nurses left because they don't have the same language skills doctors do. but the net result was a huge shortage, with some hospitals practically collapsing. The government eventually realized things were awful (I guess the people in charge are somewhat disconnected from the people, are surrounded by guys dress in red who tell them what they want to hear), so they gave doctors a 40 % raise. Since inflacion has been running at 20 to 30 %, this just put them a little behind where they were two years ago, which isn't enough.

The same is happening with other professions. We've lost thousands of engineers. And the top students in the newly graudated classes usually opt to leave as well. You see, they are middle class, and today in Venezuela the middle class is insulted, reviled, and spat upon. What's happening here is similar to what happened in Uganda, when Idi Amin decided to expel millions of people because they didn't fit what he felt an Ugandan should be. The mass exodus destroyed Uganda's economy. Recently, I heard Chavez musing that Idi Amin was a nationalist, in what appeared to be a sympathetic tone.