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Abstract |
Nurse migration flows in and out of New Zealand are examined to determine impacts and regional contexts. A descriptive statistics method was used to analyse secondary data on nurses added to the register, New Zealand nurse qualifications verified by overseas authorities, nursing workforce data, and census data. It found that international movement of nurses was minimal during the 1990s, but from 2001 a sharp jump in the verification of locally registered nurses by overseas authorities coincided with an equivalent increase in international registered nurses added to the local nursing register. This pattern has been sustained to the present. Movement of local registered nurses to Australia is expedited by the Trans-Tasman Agreement, whereas entry of international registered nurses to New Zealand is facilitated by nursing being an identified “priority occupation”. The author concludes that future research needs to consider health system and nurse workforce contexts and take a regional perspective on migration patterns. |
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