30 September 2012:

The New Zealand Nurses Organisation (NZNO) has completed research into the experiences of Internationally Qualified Nurses (IQNs) working in New Zealand.

Dr Jill Clendon, NZNO’s Nursing Policy Advisor/Researcher; “The key findings were that discrimination against IQNs  is present in New Zealand workplaces – particularly from patients, although nurses and management feature highly,”

“The experiences of IQNs in NZ are similar to experiences of IQNs anywhere in the world and can be partially (but not fully) explained as a feature of the ‘settling in’ process (acculturation),”

“Workplaces, teams and individual nurses must recognise the challenges facing IQNs and support them to transition to the New Zealand workplace successfully, in particular recognising the prior skills and experience they bring to New Zealand,”

“New Zealand is reliant on this workforce to ensure there are sufficient nurses to provide the care required to meet population health needs and we must ensure we do not lose them because their expectations are not met or experiences are poor,”

Clendon concludes by commenting that; “Nurses are a highly educated and mobile profession. In a global economy, NZ nurses also find employment and gain nursing experience in other countries. We must become and remain an employing country of choice, or we will continue to lose NZ educated nurses and fail to attract or keep IQNs.”