by Jason Morris

According to Human Resource Executive Magazine the need for international recruiting is going to explode.  In the United States we are experiencing a massive nursing shortage.  According to the Baltimore based Center for Nursing Advocacy, the US is projected to have a shortage of 275,000 nurses by 2010.  HR Executive writes an interesting article;  RX for International Recruiting.  Currently there are no standards for recruiting nurses internationally.

And the United States is not alone, according to Patricia Pittman, executive vice president of Washington-based AcademyHealth, a nonpartisan organization that focuses on health research and policy.

“It’s really impossible to compete with salaries in the United States,” says Pittman, who estimates that a nurse can earn up to 10 times their salary in the source country.

This is creating some big issues across the globe.  Unethical recruiters see huge dollar signs and are doing everything they can to bring nurses to the US.  Recruiters in India and the Philippines seem to be taking advantage of this and are using unethical means to recruit talent.  According to HRE in order to respond to the problem, a code of ethics for recruiting foreign-educated nurses was recently unveiled at the National Press Club in Washington by a task force of health care professionals, attorneys and recruiters, among others.

What does this mean to you?  Make sure you are doing background checks on your recruiters and nurses.  International Background Checks or Global Background Screening services are available and should be utilized in all cases.  Make sure your foreign recruiters are adhearing to ethical standard and not putting your orgainization at risk.