South Africahas a surfeit of qualified nurses, yet more than 20,000 of them are unemployed. This while there is pressure on public health facilities to deliver healthcare at an acceptable level.
Democratic Nursing Organisation’s (Denosa) spokesperson Sibongiseni Delihlazo said these unemployed nurses could help counter the inefficiency, long queues and poor service in public healthcare.
She urged the government to protect and invest in the nurses’ profession and end unemployment, but to date none of these requests had been met.
That is the bad news for nurses. The good is that if they wanted to work overseas in first-world countries they would get a red-carpet welcome, especially in Canada.
A rural health advocacy project (2022) titled “Sustain and Retain” stressed that nursing retention was a global problem.
To quote: “Unless interventions to retain nurses are adopted, the consequences will be dire. In low- and lower-middle income countries (in which SA is bracketed), which are now most affected by nursing jobs shortages, [this is] made worse by ‘fast tracking’ — recruiting nurses into high-income countries, which is a threat to their health delivery system.”
Nurses sitting at home in South Africa could be the solution to Canada’s 60,000 nurse shortage, said Nicholas Avramis of Beaver Immigration services, a company based in Johannesburg that eases the way for South Africans wanting to live and work in Canada or simply get a job.
He said the country has acknowledged that all levels of nursing, from qualified theatre nurses through to care facilitators at senior care villages, were the backbone of any healthcare system and Canada was on a huge recruitment drive to reduce its current demand for about 60,000 qualified nurses.
He said as long as the applicants for permanent residence were qualified, access to Canada should be a relatively simple procedure, with one proviso.
“All applicants have to be proficient in English, and they will need to pass a test to prove it.”
Foreigners are now outweighing Canadians in many of the government or provincial healthcare facilities and South Africans, from senior medical specialists down to carers are needed to plug the gaps.
Canada, as with many developed countries, has an ageing population, which translates directly into a need for more healthcare workers.
When South Africa recruited doctors from Cuba the newly graduated professionals complained that they were not paid on the level of local doctors and that the jobs they were offered were often in remote rural areas.
When asked to comment on the likelihood that this may happen to SA immigrants in Canada, Avramis said he could not comment on the local practices but in Canada, new citizens had the freedom to work wherever they could find a job and due to the shortage, many doors were open.
Data from Employment and Social Development Canada showed that aside from registered nurses, general practitioners, cardiologists, neurologists, family physicians, specialist physicians, and medical technicians were among the most in-demand jobs within the healthcare sector for skilled foreigners.
Specialists are, on average, the highest earners (R4.4m a year) with medical technicians at R660,000.
Health related jobs are not the only ones that Canada employment agencies are zeroing in on.
The full range of IT professionals is also in popular demand. Software developers can earn nearly R2m, project managers and security experts about R1.5m.
Avramis said the motivation to immigrate to Canada fell mainly into two camps. For in the early stage of their careers it tended to be about remuneration and the prospect of career growth.
“For those with families, the children’s future and wellbeing is paramount, and parents want children to have access to a good education, live in a safe environment and be assured of a job after graduating.”
He said the global demand for South Africa’s healthcare workers had compelled Beaver to ramp up its recruitment of nurses and doctors from June.
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