UnityPoint Health-St. Luke's in Sioux City, Iowa, is looking beyond the United States for nurses, according to a Sioux City Journal.
St. Luke's currently employs four nurses from Jamaica and the Philippines.
Priscilla Stokes, the hospital's vice president of patient care and CNO, told the Sioux City Journal St. Luke's hadn't considered recruiting foreign nurses until last year. She told the publication the idea came from a colleague who came to the United States three decades ago from the Philippines to work as a nurse.
"She's just a stellar nurse. I just started thinking, 'It'd be so great to have somebody like her in our hospital,'" Ms. Stokes said, according to the report.
But the process wasn't easy. It involved contacting nursing recruitment agency O'Grady Peyton to determine the feasibility of bringing foreign nurses to St. Luke's; clearing the proposal to hire foreign nurses with the hospital's attorneys; and getting permission from St. Luke's leadership and board of directors, reports the Sioux City Journal.
O'Grady Peyton initially gave St. Luke's the resumes of five nurses who previously went through rigorous background checks, competency screenings and English language testing, the report states. Ms. Stokes told the Sioux City Journal four of the candidates interviewed via Skype, and the hospital hired three of them.
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