Written by Dudley Brown, www.GoUpState.com

Thirty-three years ago, five Spartanburg Regional Medical Center nurses came to Spartanburg from the Philippines knowing nothing about Spartanburg. They spent two years feeling homesick, but now they proudly call Spartanburg home.

They were in their early 20s when they came here and have lived in Spartanburg ever since.

"We love Spartanburg," said Ofelia Lopez, staff nurse in the hospital's mother and baby unit. "It's our home. People opened their arms and welcomed us, even though we didn't know what they were saying at first," because of the Southern accents and slang.

The Philippines is a popular destination for U.S. hospitals looking to hire nurses because of the shortage of people pursuing medical professions in the United States. Zerno Martin, former senior vice president of the hospital, recruited in the Philippines twice and recruited those nurses in 1975.

"Their eagerness to come here kind of surprised me," said Martin, who estimates he interviewed at least 50 nursing students from morning to night for three or four days.

Martin said many people in the Philippines speak English and nursing students follow a curriculum similar to those in the United States.

It was an intense process for the nurses, who spent six months taking exams and being interviewed by recruiters. Filipino nurses are still heavily recruited across the world. Some Filipino doctors attend nursing school so they can make more money abroad as nurses.

"People want to leave the country to go other places and make money, and nursing is always in demand everywhere," Lopez said.

Nelda Hope, educational coordinator; Maria Bernardi, staff nurse in Neuro ICU; Victoria Baumann, staff nurse in the labor and delivery department; and Macaria Bandigas, staff nurse in the pulmonary department, are the other nurses still in Spartanburg after what they remember being a chilly February day when they arrived.

In all, 23 nurses came to Spartanburg from the Philippines that February. Sixteen came to work at Spartanburg General Hospital, Spartanburg Regional's previous name, and seven went to Mary Black Memorial Hospital. Lopez and Bandigas were originally at Mary Black before moving to Spartanburg General a couple of years later.

Temperatures were in the 90s when they left the Philippines. They remember their lips cracking and skin getting dry once they arrived in Spartanburg.

"It was probably 50 degrees, but we were freezing," Hope said.

In 1987, Hope helped the hospital recruit nurses in the Philippines. Baumann returned to the Philippines in 1977, and Hope recruited her to come back to Spartanburg. Hope now has a niece leaving the Philippines for a nursing job in Rockingham, N.C.

The women usually get together monthly. All are U.S. citizens and married with children. Their families celebrate holidays together and enjoy Filipino meals. They also keep in touch with many of the nurses who left Spartanburg. Many went to California, and three of the Spartanburg nurses are planning a vacation this summer with some of those nurses.

Two men were part of that original group of nurses, including one who is a Catholic priest in Florence now.

Lopez said grocery shopping was one of their favorite things to do shortly after arriving in Spartanburg.

"There was an abundance of food that I'd never seen before," Lopez said.

Doctors and others at the hospital hosted parties to welcome them, and they were invited to have dinner with families. Lopez also remembers people staring at them wherever they went and being asked where they were from.

Bernardi has photo albums with pictures from her arrival, and she still has her flight itinerary and airline ticket stub, too. There also are photos of the dormitory they stayed in, which is now the location of the hospital's outpatient center.

Nurses at both Spartanburg General and Mary Black had men they considered "big brothers."

Ken Hollifield was a surgical technician at Spartanburg General when the nurses came and met them at a reception held to welcome them.

"I knew they wouldn't have transportation, and I volunteered to take them shopping and to do chores," said Hollifield, who still works at the hospital.

Hollifield said he visited New York, Washington, D.C., and Texas with the nurses. He still keeps in touch with some of the nurses who left for California.

"We were friends then and truly remained friends throughout the years," Hollifield said.

He remembers them joking about how the nurses heard so much about the skyscrapers in New York and Los Angeles, and they were looking for tall buildings when they landed in Spartanburg.

"We were young and foolish," said Lopez while reminiscing about coming to the United States.

"And pretty," Bandigas added.

Written by Merituuli Ahola, Helsingin Sanomat

In October last year, Philippine nurse and mother of four, Helen Donesa, 45, was watching television when she saw an interview with a Finnish man who said that he had come to the Philippines to recruit nurses for work in Finland.

At that time Donesa certainly had no idea that in just six months she herself would be interviewed at a Finnish dementia treatment home. "I am just an ordinary person, but here my picture has already been in a paper", she says with amazement.

The Filipino nurses attract interest because they are the first group of foreign nurses to have been recruited from abroad to work in Finland. Their aim is to open the way for possibly hundreds of other nurses, whom their employers, the Finnish health care company Esperi Care, plans to bring into Finland in the next two years.

A group of four men and four women arrived in Helsinki on Wednesday. The first couple of days the group has toured Finnish offices, getting Finnish social security numbers, bank accounts, and bus passes.

"Everything has gone quite smoothly and in a friendly manner", says 26-year-old Urminico Baronda.

Their accommodation is also seen as excellent. The Philippine nurses have been accommodated in two apartments of about 70 square metres each. The men live in one, and the women live in the other.

"There is a washing machine and an electric stove. In the Philippines we wash our laundry by hand and we usually cook food on an open fire", he says.

Baronda has come to Finland to care for old people and earn money.

"Here I can earn five or six times what I make in the Philippines", he says.

In the Philippines, the monthly pay for a nurse is EUR 250. In Finland, the starting salary for a nurse is about EUR 1,600. "This is an excellent opportunity to achieve a better life", Baronda says.

At home in the Philippines, he has a wife and a one-year-old daughter. Baronda and the others plan to send most of his pay home each month.

Nurses are an export product for the Philippines. The state deliberately trains a surplus of them, and the country has an established market for recruitment of local nurses abroad.

Up to 10% of the Philippines' GDP is from wages sent back home by citizens working abroad.
"My sister has worked as a nurse in Italy for 24 years already. My cousin is working in the United States", Helen Donesa says.

She has had nursing jobs herself in Libya and Saudi Arabia.

"Working abroad is much more common in the Philippines than here with us", says Esperi Care's CEO Marja Aarnio-Isohanni.

She knows that not everyone takes a favourable view of the recruitment of nurses from abroad. One of the objections is that there would be plenty for foreign nurses to do in their own countries.

"Naturally, it would be wonderful if health care were to operate better there. However, that is beyond our control", Aarnio-Isohanni says in her company's defence.

The Filipino nurses appear very satisfied as they eat pea soup for lunch.

"Finland looks like a great country. There are few people here, and everyone is truly friendly. The air is clean, and there is no traffic here", laughs Helen Donesa.

In Finland the nurses will be working around the Helsinki region. For the first six months they will work as assistants under an apprenticeship scheme, after which Esperi Care will offer them a two year contract.

"We hope that they would be in Finland to stay", Aarnio-Isohanni says.

That is exactly what Helen Donesa and Urminico Baronda say that they want to do. "It would be best if we could bring our families here. The sooner, the better."

Written by Erwin Cabucos, Filipinas Magazine

Theresa’s hands were trembling when she hung up the phone at a small company clinic in Zamboanga City. It was the call she had been waiting for. A call from a 20-bed hospital in an outback town in Australia. In-need of a nurse. As soon as possible.

The voice of the nursing supervisor reverberated in her head: "It’s a small healthcare facility and the town is not much bigger. And we need your help. Will you come and work for us?"

She dashed to the Internet café not far from her clinic. Theresa hardly blinked with what she saw on the screen: Welcome to Balranald, New South Wales. Wheats everywhere. Population: 1,500. Forget about clubs, cinemas and food courts. There’s an IGA, a local cooperative sort of general store, and the next Woolworths, the major grocery chain in the country, is one-hour away.

From Zamboanga to New South Wales

She breathed in and felt her palms sweating. "Would I go for it?" she thought. "Would I survive there?"

She made a decision. "At least it’s in Australia," she reassured herself. "If I could survive the poverty in the Philippines, I would get over working in a remote area in Australia."

She recalled that she was initially worried about her duties. "Would they be different from what she was doing in the Philippines? Would they be different from her practice? How about the people I would be working with? At that time, "I wasn’t exposed to a proper hospital setting yet."

Flying from Zamboanga to Manila, then to Melbourne, the shy Filipina nurse hopped on a bus for a 15-hour journey to a town "so quiet, I could hear the chirping bird on the stalk of a swaying wheat grass on the side of the road."

Had it just been two days since she was barging through the noisy streets of Zamboanga? Now, she is in a town so small, the only bank—the Commonwealth Bank—is serviced by a post office agent on the side of the road.

Despite all the challenges of the new environment, Theresa considered herself lucky. She is one of three siblings, the only daughter of Tirso and Victoria Lisondra of Zamboanga City who made it to working overseas and had the opportunity to earn dollars. She rejoiced at the possibility of being able to send lots of money home to augment the survival lifestyle of her family back home.

Australian-schooled

Actually, it was not Theresa’s first time in Australia. She had an AusAid Scholarship to study for a Bachelor of Nursing degree at the University of Newcastle, situated in a coastal town, two hours by car north of Sydney. While at the university, she practiced as a clinical nurse at the city’s John Hunter Hospital and the Mater Hospital.

After completing her degree in Australia she went home to practice her profession in the needy areas of this Southern Philippine city. She was shocked when she was told that her Australian nursing degree was not recognized in the Philippines!

"I fought with them," she recalls. "I had studied for four years in a first world country and yet what I learned was not good enough for the Philippines! I was appalled!"

"To be recognized as a registered nurse in the Philippines I had to undergo two more years of studies and had to be working in a hospital setting. I wasn’t prepared to do that. At the back of my mind, I had plans to somehow find the means to go back to Australia."

Theresa worked as a clinic nurse at a plywood processing company in Zamboanga, treating urgent cases, often wounded workers, for the equivalent of $6 Australian a day.

She just laughs about it now. She currently gets about $50 Australian (P1,900) an hour as weekend rate.

"And it was hard work at the clinic. You attend to wounded patients, apply first aid, call up a doctor, organize their transport to a bigger hospital if needed. It was quite full-on."

Balranald

In Balranald, Theresa got to do many things but it was not as busy. "I had to do physiotherapy, blood letting and collection, injections, cannula application, time management, being in-charge of the ward, among other things. But I got to rest as well.

"The hospital staff was very helpful to me. I was in a small town with people of big hearts."

But she got bored. "When I asked my supervisor if there was a Filipino community in town, she gave the name of the local pharmacist who, she suspected, is married to a Filipina. She was right: the pharmacist’s wife was the only Filipino in town!

"When I attended Sunday mass, I found another Filipina. They didn’t even know each other. I had to introduce them. Apparently, they just liked to stay indoors because they feared their skin would get dark from the sun!"

Challenges

Balranald Hospital is managed by the Far West Area Health Service, whose clients and patients are predominantly farmers and people from the aboriginal communities.

"The color of my patients’ skin doesn’t matter to me," Theresa states. When I help, I help genuinely and that’s what drives me as a nurse. It’s so rewarding to be able to help someone, seeing them get better."

As in any profession, she faces challenges in her job. One time she had to collect blood from a drunken patient. "The needle wobbled as his arm shook. It was scary," she recalls.

"There were also times when my patient’s family would ask for another nurse even if I was already there in the room with them. I felt degraded and belittled. I suspect some Caucasians think that because I’m Asian I’m not good enough.

"So I would approach them proudly and confidently and, with a smile, ask if there was anything I could do to help. I wanted to show them I’m just as qualified as the other nurses. They then got pretty friendly and I was happy to be able to help them well."

Stepping stone

A year after she got to Balranald, Theresa was able to buy her own car. She drove to the cities and decided to transfer to the coastal and cosmopolitan cities of the east coast of Australia.

She went back to working at John Hunter Hospital and the Mater Private Hospital in the same city where she got her nursing degree. She felt quite at home there, with acquaintances from her university days. There were also plenty of Filipinos, one of the fastest growing migrant groups in Australia.

Eventually, Theresa decided to see more of the vast continent so she signed up for assignment at needy hospitals in rural areas. Being single and free, she hopped from one city to the next, including Hervey Bay and Rockhampton, dubbed as the gateway to the famous Great Barrier Reef in Queensland. She also worked in small New South Wales towns, including Denman (pop. about 1,500) and Yeoval (pop. 450). Today she works in Canberra, the nation’s capital, with a population of over 320,000.

Theresa is now an Australian citizen. She hasn’t forgotten that it was Balranald that gave her the opportunity to work and live in Australia. If another chance comes up for her to return to a quiet place like Balranald, she would do it, she says. In a small town, she can save and send more money home to her family in Zamboanga.

For Filipino nurses who want to try their luck in Australia, Theresa encourages them to apply online through career websites, such as mycareer.com.au and seek. com.au, like she did. She says it’s easy for other Filipino nurses to have their degrees updated and work as registered nurses in Australia. Salaries can reach up to $65,000 Australian a year. Those with degrees other than nursing can also have their previous studies assessed by the National Office for Overseas Recognition or NOOSR.

"It’s easier to study nursing in Australia than in the Philippines. Students in Australia are given tasks to study or practice, or only have to write an essay to complete a subject. Students in the Philippines are given exams every week or every two weeks. That’s very exhausting."

As for her social life, Theresa says she seldom meets men her age. She surmises that they could be hanging out in pubs, which are not her scene at all. "I think I’m really destined for a Filipino guy," she says.

But first things first. This year, Theresa hopes to be able to bring her mother for a visit. "I want to show Mamang the beautiful places in Australia. I’ll think she’ll enjoy them all."

Written by Rebecca Todd, The Press

Trained Filipino nurses are paying thousands of dollars to colleges and recruitment agencies in the hope of well-paid jobs in Christchurch public hospitals, only to become trapped in low-paid care work.

However, the colleges insist they are helping foreign-trained nurses get registered in New Zealand, with English-language skills a major stumbling block.

New Zealand Nurses' Organisation (NZNO) industrial adviser Rob Haultain said training colleges were using overseas recruiters to bring in large numbers of Filipino nurses as students.

They paid thousands of dollars to immigration agents in the belief they would earn $50,000 in New Zealand as a nurse.

Instead, they were being funnelled into aged-care courses and ended up working in rest homes for $30,000.

The Filipinos cannot register as nurses in New Zealand until they pass a demanding International English Language Testing System (IELTS) examination.

Haultain said Filipino nurses in Christchurch had reported being bonded to work for several years by rest homes, which paid their tuition fees.

In the North Island, one nurse had her passport taken from her by an employer. This was later ruled illegal after an employment hearing.

The Counties Manukau District Health Board became so concerned about the reported exploitation, it signed a deal with a Philippines government agency last month to bring nurses direct from the Philippines, cutting out private agents.

The nursing union was also concerned about links between overseas recruiters, Christchurch colleges and the rest homes nurses were fed to.

Haultain believed there was no need for trained nurses to do the Aged Care Education (Ace) courses offered by Christchurch-based King's Education Ltd and Canterbury Link College.

"The national certificate of learning in aged care is superior in our opinion, if you do any training at all," he said.

Haultain said the Filipino nurses could not return home, because they had a huge debt to pay, or swap jobs, as their work visas were for caregiving.

"It really distresses us that we know people are ... not treated fairly," Haultain said.

However, course providers say they are helping overseas nurses into a New Zealand career path.

The co-founder and former joint managing director of national residential care provider Ryman Healthcare, John Ryder, is also chairman of King's Education Ltd.

He is also chairman of the Health Education Trust, which produced and owns the Ace programmes.

These programmes, along with English courses, are offered by King's Education and Canterbury Link to foreign nurses wanting work in New Zealand.

The King's website says it has "extensive contacts" with employers in the aged-care industry and can assist graduates in finding employment.

Ryder said King's Education was primarily an English-language school.

Students were encouraged to take a 24-week English course, at a cost of more than $8000, aimed at getting their nursing registration.

But many opted for the shorter course with a mix of English and aged-care education.

"The majority go into caregiving roles at first because that's where the jobs are," he said.

Christchurch had the most caregiver vacancies in New Zealand in an industry already plagued by recruitment difficulties and high staff turnover.

Although the training was not strictly necessary, having a New Zealand qualification was an advantage for students when applying for jobs and work visas, he said.

King's did not have formal contracts with any rest homes and students could work wherever they chose, he said.

However, he knew of employers bonding students to work for a period of time if they had paid for a nurse's education and competency courses "in order to make those cost outlays worthwhile".

Ryder said he had not had any complaints from students about being overcharged or mistreated by foreign agents or employers.

It was standard for an English school to use overseas agents and to pay these agents a fee, he said.

Canterbury Link College pastoral care officer July Caneja said the college took in 10 to 20 students for its Ace courses each month. Ninety-eight per cent were Filipinos.

The college had registered education agents in the Philippines recruiting for the school, she said.

"This is a pathway for nurses to get registration and exposure in the New Zealand healthcare system," she said.

The nurses could "breeze through" the competency tests, but many were stuck on the English exam.

Until they passed the IELTS exam, they worked as "healthcare assistants" in rest homes.

Caneja said the college did not have contracts with any residential homes but helped students find employment with them.

A Department of Labour spokesman said it was "difficult to determine expectations given to applicants by consultancies", but it had "ongoing concern about the quality of advice given to potential migrants by immigration advisers".


NZ Statistics on FILIPINOS

* Largest group of net migrants from Asia in the past year.
* 6143 Filipino immigrants in the 2007-08 year and 5065 the year before.
* 122 Filipinos were given work visas as registered nurses in the past year.

Written by Bjarne Wildau, ScandAsia.com

In the Philippines they are highly regarded nurses, but in Finland, they are just unskilled workers. Marla Takama started the hard way, once again from zero, and went trough the Finnish version of the nurse education in her new country.

But that’s not the same as they agree with the policy of saying no thank you to the Filipino nurses.

“Why can’t the Finnish system accept our diplomas, when the Americans and the British do it without any hesitation”? The two Finnish Filipinos are asking.
And no wonder, because the patient is welcoming them during the daily life at the hospitals, Marla Takama, 48, says.

Now and then, it happens that the patients in Kauhava take an extra look or five, when they meet her for the first time. Very few react on her pronunciation, but after all, she has been living in Finland more than 20 years. But now and then, one of the patients “wake up” and deliver an extra smile back, when the happy, tanned face appear in front of them.

“Usually I am telling the wondering patient, that I am a brown angel, who just landed to take care of them. It normally works. Actually, some patience need some time to get used to me, but is has never developed in to big problems. The language is the biggest challenge, especially in the craft”.

She never learned to manage writing in finish.

“All the papers I have to fill out. Oh my dear, don’t talk about it”, she says with a big smile, despite she got a very negative surprise up on arrival to Finland.

“It was not a nice feeling to be told, that my five year long education, and my experiences as a nurse, in one of the biggest hospital in Manila, had absolutely no value at all”, say Marla Takama, who had promised her self, that she would never go back to a classroom. But at the end of the day, she got tired about the low salary, she could earn as an unskilled hospital worker.

Better time ahead

And her decision to enter the three year long education seems to pay of straight ahead.
“Soon it will be much better. As a nurse with diploma, my basic salary will be around 1600 euro. And that’s Ok for me. In the Philippines, a similar job will give approximately 300 Euros. I know that everything here in Finland is much more expensive, but as a matter of fact, many things are free, like healthcare and education, just to mention”.

Marla Takama, are one out of the eight migrants, who recently finished there education as nurses at the “Svenska yrkesinstitutet” (SYI) in the town of Vasa. And she has already been offered two different jobs. No worries there.

The group is the first, finalising their education within the frame of SYI´s three years English language practical nurse education. The interest for the new education was great. 150 applied to enter, but only 24 were accepted. And the interest for the next groups of students, starting in the coming autumn, is even bigger. 250 people have already filled out the application formulas I Vasa.

Waiting for changes

But not every Filipino nurse in Finland rush to get the new education.

Cecilia Aranoa-Storås moved to Finland back in 1996. Since then, she has been working on several hospitals, Stora Enso included. She is also educated as a nurse in her fatherland. But she has no plans to educate her self as a nurse for a second time. “Sooner or later, the finish authorities have to change their policy, and accept our educations. And I don’t think it will take a lot of time, before that happen. Don’t forget, that there is a huge demand for nurses in Finland. Many Filipinos are already here, waiting for the opportunity to work. In the Philippines, there is a though competition for the jobs at the hospitals”.

Head of the new English language based education at SYI, Headmaster Åsa Stenbacka, only have positive things to add:

“Filipino people are open-minded and humble. Fitting very well to the Finnish culture”.
The healthcare institutions, mainly the hospitals, join the club of positives. The skills in the Finnish language do not really meet the demands, though. Three obligatory courses in Finnish can hardly do the jobs to secure a proper communication between the new nurses, and their patients.

Written by James Osborne, The Monitor

McALLEN - Sitting in a darkened movie theater in Manila, Philippines, more than 40 years ago, Lilie Schneider decided she was headed for the United States.

So when she was old enough, she signed up for a nursing program.

"When you go to the movies they show you all these nice places to go. It looked so pretty," said Schneider, now a 52-year-old nurse at McAllen Medical Center, of her first glimpse of the United States on the silver screen.

"For (Filipina women), nursing is the only way to get out of the country."

Almost wholly buoyed by a nursing shortage in the U.S. medical industry, the Filipino population in the Rio Grande Valley has exponentially grown for decades.

Nurses from the Philippines first started arriving in the Valley in the 1980s, but it wasn't until the 1990s, as NAFTA's effects began to unfold, that the local push to recruit foreign nurses really got going. With more people settling in the area because of growing economic opportunities, there was a need for greater healthcare services.

International employment agencies were put on speed dial and lucrative signing bonuses were offered to those willing to sign multi-year contracts.

"They were offering $50,000 (bonuses) for four years at McAllen (Medical Center)," said Aster Vargas, president of the local chapter of the Philippine Nurses Association of America.

"The bonuses are done, but people are still coming down ... if you buy a house in Los Angeles or New Jersey, a cheap house is $300,000; but here a $300,000 house will be beautiful."

Word of mouth
The Filipino community, once largely unnoticed, is now an obvious and integral part of operations at area hospitals.

Within South Texas Health System - the private corporation that runs five major hospitals in the McAllen area - 20 percent of nurses are classified as Asian, most of whom are Filipino, according to spokeswoman Dalinda Guillen.

Two decades ago, when there were only a handful of Filipino nurses in local hospitals, Normita Hayes - now 65 and working at a long-term care facility in McAllen - was hired to a high-level nursing position at Brownsville Medical Center.

One of the first Filipinas to work in the Rio Grande Valley, she quickly encountered resentment in her local subordinates.

"They called me the foreign devil," she laughs. "There were no other Filipinos around then. Things have changed a lot and we're more accepted."

By the 2000 U.S. Census there were 1,685 Filipinos living in Hidalgo County, up from 204 in the 1990 Census.

"There was a lot of recruitment in the Philippines 15 years ago and a lot of them stayed," said Patti McClelland, the head of human resources at South Texas Health.

"They have relatives all over the country, who hear the word of mouth about the Valley. That's how we get the nurses to come down."

Common ground
Nowadays, many Filipino families are firmly entrenched here.

They have busy social calendars occupied by food-laden parties. They shop at Filipino stores that have opened in recent years in North McAllen on 10th and 23rd streets, where they can find the kind of fruits and dried fish common in their country.

And they have come to find a kinship with the predominant Mexican-American population.

"We were both colonized by Spain, so we have very similar values to Mexicans," Vargas said.

"You live with your parents until you get married, even if you're 50 years old. And we feel it's the parents' responsibility to send their children to college ... they shouldn't have to work."

Of course, assimilation has also meant some growing pains.

Hayes made a point of raising her son the "Filipino way," which she said involves long hours of study and a heavy dose of manners. Then he turned 15, rebelled and became more American with each passing year, she laughs. He is now in his mid-20s.

"The majority of Filipino children are very productive and successful, and more obedient than my son," she says with an air of good-natured resignation.

"He's a Texan."