Hospitals failing to integrate foreign nurses, report finds

IRISH hospitals are failing to properly integrate foreign nurses into the health care system, new research has found.

In the first project of its kind, researchers found that even in hospitals with very proactive integration policies, the difficulties faced by internationally-recruited nurses was underestimated.

Huge language difficulties, problems with varying nursing practices, cultural differences, intercultural integration and inequality of opportunity were highlighted.

The report has also suggested that the pace at which foreign nurses are integrated was slower than expected, even though staffing of internationally-recruited nurses at some Irish hospitals is as high as 50%.

The research team said the findings pointed to the urgent need for hospitals to develop a corporate strategy to manage integration.

The joint research project was conducted over the last 18 months by the Mercy University Hospital (MUH) in Cork and University College Cork’s Department of Psychology.

Researchers followed the journey of two groups of international nurses and compared their experiences with those of indigenous nursing staff.

“We discovered we were not succeeding as comprehensively as we thought we should,” said MUH director of nursing Mary Dunnion.

“We only fully met two of the five success criteria used in the study for integration into any occupation, filling the vacancies and registration,” she added.

The project also found that the international recruitment of nurses will continue over the next few decades and that the majority of new staff is likely to come from the Philippines, India and from mainland Europe.

The full findings of the research will be released at the inaugural National Nursing Conference in Cork this Thursday.