Uniform gains

Mohini Bhatnagar
09 December 2003

Hyderabad: After software professionals, it''s time for nurses to head for the US.

An ageing population that increasingly requires trained medical care, coupled with a shortage of experienced medical professionals in the US, is leading US healthcare companies to head towards developing companies (preferably English-speaking), looking for experienced and trained medical staff.

According to studies done in the US, people over 85 are the fastest-growing segment of the US population. Baby-boomers of the sixties are on the verge of retirement and will become eligible for medicare in 2011.

Also, nurses are ageing along with the rest of the population with the average nurse in the US being in her late forties or early fifties. Plus, with employment opportunities in other fields becoming more attractive in the US, fewer women are entering the nursing profession with the result that there is an acute shortage of trained medical staff.

The shortage of trained nurses alone in the US will be of the order of 450,000 in two years and over 1 million by 2010. While Indian nurses have been heading for the UK soon they may also begin heading for the US.

Two companies — United Church Homes (UCH) in the US and Heritage Hospitals in India — are making a beginning in organising the training and equipping of Indian nurses to take up nursing jobs in the US. They have entered into memorandums of understanding to form two legal entities, UCH Heritage Healthcare (USA) Inc and UCH Heritage Healthcare India.