NRB conference
In the NRB conference 2007 the President of US-Bangladesh Advisory Council Sabbir Ahmed said, “At present there are 400,000 vacant posts for nurses in the US, and Bangladesh can export skilled human resources against those posts”. I could not agree more. I believe that management and entrepreneurs in that sector should pay serious attention to this matter.
Until recently, I did not think of nursing as being comparable to high tech jobs. But now America is hiring foreign English speaking experienced nurses from all over the world, especially from South Africa since 2003.
There is a risk of losing our existing nurses to serve the country. I am not proposing to export them and have our hospitals and nursing homes emptied. This is why this is a very sensitive venture. We have to plan and execute it keeping in mind that we only pursue the win-win projects. We may follow some specific guidelines:
Hospitals and schools that train nurses could create additional capacities. Students, who are good at English from universities or colleges, should be trained with a commitment of serving 1-2 years at nursing homes or hospitals. This should not be free. They should get paid for their job. This is a win-win situation for them . Students who are not good in English may improve their skill and also get the opportunities to participate in such programmes.
The job opportunities for Resident Nurses are expected to grow by more than 36% through 2010. This field has been rated “grow faster than average” by the US Department of Labour. For more information on that, please visit the US Department of Labour, Bureau of Labour Statistics on Internet. I hope to write more on the Nurse Training and Education requirement in future. I would like to give another piece of information: the median annual earnings of RN were $44.840 in 2000. Please keep in mind that a significant part of that salary goes to taxes (about one third).
For all latest news, follow The Daily Star's Google News channel.
Comments