FACTORS SHAPING CARIBBEAN NURSE MIGRATION AND THE IMPACT ON LONG-TERM CARE

Abstract

Current and projected shortages of nurses in long term care (LTC) settings in the United States, have resulted in increasing employment of foreign educated (FE) nurses (Redfoot & Houser, 2008); an estimated 31% (18,290) of FE RNs and 88% of FE LPNs (5,280), worked in LTC facili- ties (Smith & Crawford, 2004). The Caribbean is one of the top regions in Low and Middle Income Countries (LMIC) sending nurses to supply the U.S. LTC workforce (MacLean et al., 2014). To advance our understanding of factors shap- ing this migration, a systematic review was conducted. PubMed and CINAHL were searched between September- November, 2016, supplemented with the snowball method, and gray literature retrieved from key stakeholder organi- zations (e.g., ICN, WHO). Article reviews were conducted using the matrix method by Garrard (2014)