Migration of Latin American Nurses Could Help U.S. Healthcare

By John Benson, Saludify

Solving healthcare issues on both sides of the border is the theme of the recently released report Strengthening Health Systems in North and Central America: What role for migration?

Migration Policy Institute Policy Analyst Eleanor Sohnen tells Saludify the study, which is co-authored by New York University College of Nursing’s Allison Squires, PhD, RN and Hiram Beltrán-Sánchez of the Population Studies Center at Harvard University, reveals two main findings.

“Although current registered nurse production in the U.S. is seen as sufficient to fulfill needs in the short- to medium-term, there are needs for under-served populations, specifically Spanish-speaking populations,” Sohnen said. “A very small percentage of these nurses speak Spanish, even those with Hispanic heritage. Another lesson is for Mexico and Central America, some of these countries have a critical lack of health services professionals, specifically nurses.”

The latter point stems from a difference of nursing school curricula. Not only are Central and Latin American nurses not utilized in the same fashion as their counterparts in the United States, but they often are viewed as being in a subservient position. This is compared to nurses in the U.S., who have more autonomy. The report concludes that improving the training of Latin American nurses is a necessity.

“That’s not a surprise. There are a number of challenges facing people in the profession [in Latin America],” Sohnen said. “So increasingly aligning curricula to U.S. standards cannot only serve the people in the region and their healthcare needs but also provide opportunities for highly-skilled health professionals to come to the U.S. where their skills are also needed.”

Sohnen stressed that the goal isn’t to have Latin American nurses trained solely for the purpose of immigrating to the United States, which would cause a brain-drain in their respective countries. Instead, the idea is Latin American nurses already coming to the States can bring their skills with them.

“Also, health professionals in Mexico will be able to receive higher salaries,” Sohnen said. “Presumably also there would be snowball effect throughout this sort of healthcare workforce production system as a result of those improved standards. Also the report lists a company involved in an initiative to train Mexican nurses to U.S. standards and provide them with career-specific language training. There are lessons to be learned from that kind of a program.”

One lesson that unfortunately has been somewhat negative regarding the issue has to do with the North American Free Trade Agreement [NAFTA]. Sohnen said under the agreement there’s no limit on the number of Mexican nurses that can come to the U.S.

“The problem is the way the agreement is structured it requires nurses to have bachelor’s degrees,” Sohnen said. “Now most nurses in Mexico don’t have bachelor’s degrees. So despite the fact that there is this opportunity for Mexican nurses to come here and serve critical populations that need Spanish-speaking nurses, they can’t.”

There is indeed a growing need for Spanish-speaking and culturally knowledgeable nurses. Sohnen said a recent Migration Policy Institute Policy study revealed only 3 percent of U.S. registered nurses speak Spanish.

“What we want people to take away from the study is that there are a significant number of trained healthcare professionals here in the U.S. that are not able to use their education and there are ways to address that challenge,” Sohnen said. “At the same time, there is an opportunity for countries like Mexico to build up their healthcare training systems in order to both meet needs at home and potentially the needs abroad.

“It’s a challenging situation but there are a number of opportunities it could lead to that would be good for both healthcare professionals and for potential patients.”

This article was first published in Saludify.

John Benson is employed as a fulltime freelance writer writing for local/national outlets. When he’s not covering news, music or entertainment, he can be found coaching his boys (basketball, football and baseball) or spending time with his wife, Maria.