Content uploaded by Ruairi Fionnbarra Brugha
Author content
All content in this area was uploaded by Ruairi Fionnbarra Brugha
Content may be subject to copyright.
Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland
e-publications@RCSI
Epidemiology and Public Health Medicine
Reports
Department of Epidemiology and Public Health
Medicine
2008
Nurse Migration to Ireland: An Overview. Nurse
Migration Project Policy Brief 1
Niamh Humphries
Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland
Ruairi Brugha
Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland
Hannah McGee
Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland
This Report is brought to you for free and open access by the Department
of Epidemiology and Public Health Medicine at e-publications@RCSI. It
has been accepted for inclusion in Epidemiology and Public Health
Medicine Reports by an authorized administrator of e-publications@RCSI.
For more information, please contact epubs@rcsi.ie.
Citation
Niamh Humphries, Ruairi Brugha, Hannah McGee. Nurse Migration to Ireland: An Overview. Nurse Migration Project Policy Brief
1. Dublin: Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland, 2008.
— Use Licence —
Attribution-Non-Commercial-ShareAlike 1.0
You are free:
• to copy, distribute, display, and perform the work.
• to make derivative works.
Under the following conditions:
• Attribution — You must give the original author credit.
• Non-Commercial — You may not use this work for commercial purposes.
• Share Alike — If you alter, transform, or build upon this work, you may distribute the resulting work only
under a licence identical to this one.
For any reuse or distribution, you must make clear to others the licence terms of this work. Any of these
conditions can be waived if you get permission from the author.
Your fair use and other rights are in no way affected by the above.
This work is licenced under the Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-ShareAlike License. To
view a copy of this licence, visit:
URL (human-readable summary):
•http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/1.0/
URL (legal code):
•http://creativecommons.org/worldwide/uk/translated-license
This report is available at e-publications@RCSI: http://epubs.rcsi.ie/ephmrep/1
B
ackground to the Nurse Migration Project
Ireland, historically a net exporter of nurses to countries such as the UK and the USA, began in the 1990s to
encounter nursing shortages. As a result, employers initiated international recruitment campaigns to facilitate the
migration of qualified nurses to Ireland [1]. Despite being a newcomer to overseas nurse recruitment, the rate of
recruitment to Ireland in recent years has been rapid and remarkable. Overseas trained nurses, mainly from outside
of the EU, are now an essential component of the Irish nursing workforce. However, there is little information
available about them to inform workforce planning and policy making. Questions include: Where are they from?
What skills did they bring to Ireland [2]? Where are they now working? Are their skills being well utilised? And – of
crucial importance – do they intend to stay in Ireland? If they intend to move on, what are the reasons and what
would encourage migrant nurses, who have undergone recruitment and adaptation programmes, to stay working in
Ireland? The RCSI nurse migration project seeks to fill these information gaps, through qualitative and quantitative
surveys of migrant nurses in Ireland. This policy brief is the first in a series of outputs, disseminating emerging and
early project findings.
D
ata Presented
This policy brief summarises recent nurse migration trends, based on nurse registration data from the Irish Nursing
Board [3] and work authorisation/work visa (WA/WV) data from the Department of Enterprise, Trade and
Employment [4]. It concludes with a brief discussion of the data deficiencies which currently restrict Ireland’s ability
to fully understand the dynamics of nurse migration and to factor it into workforce planning strategies.
W
ork Authorisation/Work Visa (WA/WV) Scheme
To facilitate the migration of registered nurses to Ireland, nursing was one of the professions to benefit from the
introduction of a ‘fast track’ working visa scheme in 2000. The scheme was introduced to enable skilled migrant
workers and their families to migrate to Ireland. Analysis of data relating to the WA/WV scheme [4], which operated
from 2000 to 2006 revealed that:
Figure 1: Nationality of Nurses issued with
WA/WVs 2000-2006 [4]
South
Africa
3%
Other (34
countries)
3%
Australia
2% Nigeria
2%
Philippines
50%
India
40%
Nurse Migration Project Policy Brief 1: February 2008
Between 2000 and 2006, 9,441 nurses were issued
with WA/WVs.
90% of those nurses were from India or the Philippines
(see Figure 1).
Nurses accounted for 60% of all skilled professionals
issued with WA/WVs between 2000 and 2006.
2001, 2005 and 2006 were bumper years for overseas
nurse recruitment in Ireland, with approx. 2,000
WA/WVs issued to nurses in each of those years. N=9441
1
This research is funded b
y
the Health Research Board under
g
rant number RP/2006/222
Irish Nursing Board Registration Data
In order to practice nursing in Ireland, nurses must first register with the Irish Nursing Board. Although registration
does not mean that the individual is necessarily working as a nurse in Ireland, it does indicate intent to do so.
Analysis of registration data from the Irish Nursing Board [3] revealed:
0
500
1000
1500
2000
2500
3000
2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006
Figure 2: Nurses Newly Registered with the
Irish Nursing Board 2000-2006 [3]
Ireland EU Non-EU
Figure 3 : Comparison of Registration and
Immigration Data on non-EU nurses in Ireland [3,4]
0
500
1000
1500
2000
2500
3000
2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006
No. Nurses Issued with working visas (N=9441)
No. Non-EU Nurses Registering with the Irish Nursing Board
(N=9560)
Between 2000 and 2006, 43% of new entrants to the
register were non-EU nurses, with a further 8% from EU
states other than Ireland.
In 2000, 14% of new entrants to the register were non-
EU. By 2006, non-EU nurses accounted for 57% of new
entrants.
In 2006, 21% of those on the active register were from
overseas (EU and non-EU), mostly (16%) non-EU.
92% of non-EU nurses on the register, registered
between 2000 and 2006.
N = 22446
What the data do not reveal
Data on the WA/WVs issued to non-EU nurses are only available up to December 2006 when the WA/WV
scheme ended. More recent data on the visas issued to non-EU nurses is contained within a broad ‘medical
and nursing’ category.
Although the immigration and registration data presented indicates the arrival of migrant nurses to Ireland from
2000 to 2006, minimal data are available to track their progress through the Irish health system.
No data are available on how many migrant nurses are employed as nurses in Ireland, in which sectors they
work; or whether they have moved jobs or re-migrated since their initial registration and WA/WV acquisition.
Buchan et al [6] highlighted the need for a broader range of nursing workforce data to understand the impact
of nurse migration on the national nursing workforce. Such data are not readily available in the Irish context.
Ireland, until recently a net exporter of nurses, is quickly reaching nurse migration levels comparable to those
found in countries with a much longer history of skilled immigration.
What the data reveal
Data on the number of nurses issued with WA/WVs
visas between 2000 & 2006 show close correlation
between the WA/WV and nurse registration data (Fig. 3)
& enables us to present a reliable account of the rate of
nurse migration to Ireland between 2000 & 2006
Overseas nurse recruitment does not appear to have
abated as had been widely expected following the once
off demand for nurses created by the ‘gap’ year in
nursing graduations in 2005.
An increased local supply of nursing graduates in recent
years has not diminished Ireland’s need for migrant
nurses.
2
Conclusions
1. A pre-requisite to incorporating nurse migration into workforce planning is the need for comprehensive,
detailed and consistent data collection that would enable policy makers to accurately: (i) quantify the scale of
nurse immigration and emigration; (ii) assess how migrant nurses are utilised and the effects on the nursing
workforce in Ireland; and (iii) track nurse flows within the Irish health system and broader social support
services.
2. Consideration must be given to the long-term sustainability of Ireland’s reliance upon overseas nurse
recruitment, particularly in the light of global competition for nurses (see Policy Brief 2). As Kingma has
stated, ‘at any moment, recruited nurses can return to their homeland or migrate to another country if better
conditions are offered’ [9].
3. Ireland should no longer rely on incomplete or anecdotal evidence to drive policy and practice in an area that
is essential to the Irish health system and that has significant global implications.
Acknowledgements
The authors wish to thank An Bord Altranais (the Irish Nursing Board) and the Employment Permits Section of the
Department of Enterprise Trade and Employment for providing the statistics upon which this paper is based. Thanks
also to the Health Research Board for funding this project under grant number RP/2006/222.
References
1. Dublin Academic Teaching Hospitals (2000), Nursing Recruitment and Retention Group Report, DATHS:
Dublin
2. Forfás (2005) Skills Needs in the Irish Economy: The Role of Migration. A Submission by the Expert Group
on Future Skills Needs & Forfás to the Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment.
3. Irish Nursing Board, Unpublished Statistics.
4. Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment. Unpublished Statistics from the Employment Permits
Section.
5. Buchan, J. and J. Sochalski (2004), The Migration of Nurses: Trends and Policies. Bulletin of the World
Health Organization. 82(8): p. 587-93.
6. Buchan, J., T. Parkin, and J. Sochalski (2003) International Nurse Mobility: Trends and Policy Implications.
World Health Organisation, International Council of Nurses and Royal College of Nurses: Geneva.
7. Holmquist, K. (2000) From Manila to the Mater, in Irish Times. Dublin
8. Quinn, E. (2006) Managed Migration and the Labour Market - The Health Sector in Ireland. Economic and
Social Research Institute (ESRI): Dublin.
9. Kingma, M. (2006) Nurses on the Move: Migration and the Global Health Care Economy. London: ILR Press.
For More Information
The Nurse Migration Project is a HRB funded project (2006 to 2009) which involves both qualitative and quantitative
surveys of migrant nurses. It is led by Dr. Niamh Humphries, Professor Ruairí Brugha and Professor Hannah
McGee, Division of Population Health Sciences, Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland. Further information available
from Dr. Humphries: nhumphries@rcsi.ie and in a forthcoming journal article: Humphries, N, Brugha, R and McGee,
H., Overseas nurse recruitment as an illustration of the dynamic nature of nurse migration, Health Policy. (in press
2008). Further research updates will be released & disseminated in future Policy Briefs.
3
