Nurse migration hurting health care in Caribbean

The World Bank estimates that there are 7,800 nurses working in the English-speaking CARICOM.

WASHINGTON, United States, March 3, 2010 - Migration is taking a toll on nursing care in the Caribbean's countries.

According to a new World Bank report, nursing shortages across the region are limiting access and quality of health services and affecting the Caribbean's competitiveness. And the Washington-based institution has advised countries to work harder at training and retaining these health care professionals.

The report released yesterday, 'The Nurse Labor and Education Markets in the English-Speaking CARICOM - Issues and Options for Reform’, said the region is facing a rapidly growing shortage of nurses as demand for quality health care increases due to an aging population, and high numbers of nurses take up higher paying jobs in Canada, the United Kingdom and the United States.

The report said the situation may compromise the ability of English-speaking CARICOM countries to meet their key health care service needs, especially in the areas of disease prevention and care.

The World Bank estimates that there are 7,800 nurses working in the English-speaking CARICOM. 

“Nurses are the bedrock of highly functioning health systems in all countries,”
--Evangeline Javier

Evangeline Javier, Sector Director for Human Development in the World Bank’s Latin America and Caribbean region said “our research suggests English-speaking countries in the Caribbean must adopt policies that aim to train more and at the same time retain quality nurses.”

World Bank Sector Leader for Human Development and lead author of the report, Christoph Kurowski, has advised Caribbean nations to examine their policy responses towards the migration of health workers.

“Ideally, countries in the region should adopt a joined approach that balances the rights and interests of nurses and governments, as well as poorer and richer countries within the broader framework of the Caribbean Single Market Economy,” he said.

It is projected that in the coming years, demand for nurses will increase due to the health needs of the aging population. In fact, the World Bank expects that unmet demand for nurses will more than triple during the next 15 years – from 3,300 nurses in 2006 to 10,700 nurses in 2025.

At the same time, data suggests that the number of English-speaking CARICOM-trained nurses working in Canada, the UK and the US is about 21,500, that’s three times higher than the workforce in the region.

The new World Bank report also points to high demand for nurse education but low completion rates – 55 percent – as a challenge and opportunity in tackling nurse shortages.

Having more nurse tutors available, maximizing completion rates and accepting more students into programmes would significantly bolster the number of new nurses entering the health system, it said.

The key policy recommendations outlined in the report are that Caribbean countries should increase training capacity; managing migrating by taking steps such as leveraging the expatriate community, mentoring, staff exchange, and codes of practice for international recruitment; and join forces and adopt a regional approach to increasing training capacity, managing migration and strengthening the evidence-base, if possible, with technical and financial support from countries where a large part of their nurse workforce will tend to migrate, Canada, the UK and the US.

The English-speaking CARICOM countries studied for the report included Antigua and Barbuda, Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Dominica, Grenada, Guyana, Jamaica, Montserrat, St Kitts and Nevis, St Lucia, St Vincent and the Grenadines, and Trinidad and Tobago.