The Mexican government has posted 140 job openings for nurses in Canada and Germany, some of which pay up to 87,000 pesos a month.
Posted on the government’s online employment portal, the jobs include opportunities for registered nurses and senior citizen care providers, positions the host countries are having trouble filling with their own citizens.
Germany has 40 positions available in the state of Bavaria for nurses to take care of its aging citizens. The positions come with a monthly salary of 2,600 euros, about US $2,900.
Canada offered 50 openings for nurses in July, but has now increased the number of positions available to Mexican nurses.
In Quebec, there are 100 openings for registered nurses that offer a base monthly salary of 48,000 pesos. The monthly salary can go as high as 87,000 pesos per month, depending on experience and qualifications.
The job announcements come as Mexico is also experiencing a nursing shortage, but not for lack of qualified individuals.
The World Health Organization (WHO) recommends six nurses for every 1,000 inhabitants in order for a country to provide quality medical care for its citizens. Mexico has only 3.9.
That represents a shortage of 255,928 nurses in the country, in both the private and public sectors. Tamaulipas and Mexico City are the only two entities that meet the WHO recommended ratio, while the states of Puebla, Querétaro, Veracruz and Michoacán have fewer than three nurses for every 1,000 citizens.
But the shortage isn’t due to a lack of interest in the profession, but rather a lack of positions available, said María Alberta García Jiménez, president of the National Nursing Academy of Mexico.
“The reality is that there’s interest among young people to study the profession. There are 700 registered nursing schools. What happens is that there aren’t positions being offered for them to be able to work,” she said.
She said solving the shortage will require the government to increase budgets in order to open up more positions.
“The financial aspect is the determining factor. If there is no budget for increasing positions, there will not be an answer for the reduction of suffering,” she said.
Source: El Financiero (sp)
