In this article the author tells her story of migrating from the Philippines to the United States shortly after her graduation from nursing school. She describes how she adjusted to life in the United States, advanced her career, and is now helping other nurses adapt to life in a new country.Key Words:

cultural adaptation --- career advancement --- nurse migration --- Philippine nurse

Internationally Educated Nurses (IENs) are, and will continue to be an important part of the nursing workforce in the United States and throughout the world. They bring a variety of knowledge, skills, and experience to their new practice areas. Although the benefits of their knowledge, skills, and experience can be enhanced by successfully integrating them in the healthcare system of their new country, this may be a challenging process. The transition challenges of IENs are not due to lack of knowledge or clinical skills, but rather are linked to socio-cultural differences, including the structure of the healthcare systems; language subtleties such as use of idioms, acronyms, and abbreviations; and unfamiliarity with their new surroundings. Transitional programs can serve to bridge the practice gaps between IENs’ previous and new experiences. The Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania TIENS (Transitioning Internationally Educated Nurses for Success) Program is presented as a model to help organizations develop programs for IENS to ease their transition into the U.S. healthcare system. This article explains why IENs are a key component of the U.S. nursing workforce now and for the foreseeable future, presents a rationale for transition programs that support successful integration of IENs to the U.S. practice environment, describes a model Transition Program, and advocates for the development of a national policy to standardize transition programs for IENs in the United States.

internationally educated nurses --- foreign educated nurses --- internationally recruited nurses --- transition program --- migrating Philippine nurses

The number of international migrants on the move each year continues to increase. Women migrants are becoming agents of economic change as they enter the international labor market and participate in a new distribution of global wealth. Professionally active nurses are important players in an increasingly competitive, global labor market. Thousands of nurses migrate each year in search of better pay and working conditions, career mobility, professional development, a better quality of life, personal safety, or sometimes just novelty and adventure. In this article, the author looks at the characteristics and the effects of nurse migration, addresses the factors driving international nurse mobility, and discusses current issues regarding nurse migration. The author advises that rather than focusing on national and international recruitment, serious attention be given to retention strategies to successfully address the critical shortage of health professionals willing to remain in active practice.

ethical recruitment --- health human resources --- health professionals --- international recruitment --- nurse --- nurse migration --- nurse shortage

The purpose of this article is to demonstrate how active participation on a Collaborative Governance committee can promote empowerment, along with enthusiasm and confidence, while implementing the committee’s mission. This article will begin by delineating the concepts of empowerment theory and describing our institution’s Collaborative Governance structure and the structure of the Nursing Research Committee. Then the mechanisms that have fostered empowerment among committee members will be discussed, and evidence of empowerment among committee members will be presented. This article is offered to encourage more nurses to seek the rewards inherent in committee participation, and to demonstrate the link between committee work, empowerment, and professional development experienced by members of the Nursing Research Committee at our institution.

empowerment --- nursing research committees --- power --- shared governance --- collaborative governance

Nurses bring a wealth of experience and expertise to resource allocation decision making in many different arenas in and outside of health care. This article, grounded in the utilitarianism theory of justice, will examine macroallocation and microallocation of scarce resources in health care, including participation of nurses in macroallocation and microallocation of these resources, and types of allocation challenges within health care. Macroallocation in specific branches of the United States government and integrating resource allocation content into the educational curriculum are also discussed. The authors make the case that nurses can most effectively meet patient needs by active engagement in decisions that involve macroallocation and microallocation of resources.

health resource allocation --- ethics theory --- decision making --- public policy --- nursing administration --- budgets --- scarce resources --- microallocation --- macroallocation