MEXICO CITY — Grappling with a shortage of nurses, hospitals in the United States are sending recruiters to Mexico and other poor nations, raising concerns of a possible drain on already strained healthcare in the developing world.
U.S. authorities have warned that the country could fall 275,000 nurses short of the numbers it will need by 2010, in part because of increasing healthcare demands from a growing elderly population.
Recruiters have long found help in the Philippines, which established schools to train nurses to work in the United States. The healthcare forces in India, South Korea and Nigeria have also been tapped.
But the latest focus is Mexico, whose nurses could help serve the United States' rapidly expanding Latino population.
"The Mexican nurse understands, speaks and lives the culture of Latin America," said Guillermo Sanchez, president of MDS Global Medical Staffing, a Mexican company recruiting nurses to work at U.S. hospitals. "This is an advantage that has no price for the patient and the family of the patient."
Mexican nurses with advanced degrees can multiply their pay as much as tenfold.
"My motivation, more than anything, is economic," said Sanjuana Sanchez, 40, who earns $350 a month on the night shift at a public hospital in Saltillo, a city in northern Mexico.
The mortgage takes half of Sanchez's pay, and the rest helps her rear two children. So she's begun studying English by day.
"My goal is to get to the United States for the salaries. My children are young, and you always want something better for your children," she said.
Recruiting of Mexican nurses is still in the early stages. Just 58 took the U.S. nurse licensing exam in 2002, according to the most recent statistics from the National Council of State Boards of Nursing.
Only 28% passed, well below the 47% average for foreign test-takers. Nurses from English-language countries generally fare better on the certification test, which is given in English.
But more Mexican nurses may be heading north soon.
MDS Global, a newcomer to nurse recruiting, is paying for Mexican nurses' extended English classes, visa applications and tests for certification in the United States. It plans to send its first group of about 30 nurses north to work in July.
Severino Rubio, director of Mexico's National School of Nursing and Obstetrics, said that in January alone he signed certificates allowing 35 graduates to work outside Mexico.
