Article Sidebar
Keywords:
Article Details
The author(s) retain copyright on work published by AOSIS unless specified otherwise.
Licensing and publication rights
Author(s) of work published by AOSIS are required to grant AOSIS the unlimited rights to publish the definitive work in any format, language and medium, for any lawful purpose. AOSIS requires journal authors to publish their work in open access under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) licence.
The authors retain the non-exclusive right to do anything they wish with the published article(s), provided attribution is given to the applicable journal with details of the original publication, as set out in the official citation of the article published in the journal. The retained right specifically includes the right to post the article on the authors’ or their institution’s websites or in institutional repositories.
Previously published work may have been published under a different licence. We advise the community that if they would like to reuse the work to consult the applicable licence at article level.
Note: If you need to comply with your funding body policy, you can apply for the CC BY license after your manuscript is accepted for publication.
Main Article Content
The role played by recruitment agencies in the emigration of South African nurses
Abstract
Active recruitment of foreign nurses might offer solutions to many countries' nursing shortages. During 1999, the International Council of Nurses (ICN) expressed concerns regarding the aggressive international recruitment of nurses. The ICN maintained that internationally recruited nurses might be particularly at risk of exploitation or
abuse. The ICN denounced unethical recruitment practices that might exploit nurses (ICN, 1999a:1-6). Many nurses who leave the Republic of South Africa might use recruitment agencies' assistance. These concerns raised by the ICN indicated the need for obtaining information about the emigration of South African nurses and the role played by
recruitment agencies. The purpose of this study was to explore and describe how recruitment agencies contributed to the emigration of South African nurses. Both qualitative and quantitative approaches were used. A purposive sample of recruitment agencies that recruited South African nurses to practise in foreign countries (N=4) was
drawn. The second sample, a purposive sample selected through snowball sampling consisted of South African registered nurses who were practising in foreign countries (N=27). The findings obtained from structured interviews conducted with recruitment agencies were supported by findings from e-mail responses from nurses working in
foreign countries. These research results indicated that recruitment agencies in South Africa provided professional services to nurses who wanted to work in foreign countries. Contrary to research reports published in other countries, no evidence was found of nurses being exploited by recruitment agencies in South Africa.
Keywords: emigration of South African nurses; expatriate South African nurses; international recruitment of nurses; recruitment agencies
Health SA Gesondheid Vol. 10 (3) 2005: pp. 57-67
