The globalization of the labor market for health-care professionals

In recent years, we find that the migration of people from one country to another has become a contentious issue. This is especially so for the migration of million of people from the developing nations to the developed nations. In the United States today, there is a raging debate about the issue of illegal immigrants who are within the country’s borders and what the government ought to do to stem the tide of many more who are willing to do anything to get into the country. Europe too is facing a similar problem with the European citizens calling for tighter measures to keep out immigrants who the citizens claim come to take their jobs and take advantage of their social systems. However, with the current trend in globalization and the relative freedom of movement of people, goods and services it seems this is an increasingly loosing battle. People often move from one country to another in search for jobs and a better standard of living and if jobs or opportunities are plentiful in one region of the world, people will move there.

The article under review analyzes the subject of the globalization of the labor market focusing on health-care professionals. Unlike other kinds of labor markets, the health care labor market and the emigration of health care professionals has been to a large extent endorsed by many developed nations thus leading to high rate of migration of health care professionals from developing nations to developed nations. Clark, F.P., Clark, A. D., & Stewart, B.J., (2006) in their article contend that though this kind of emigration has always taken place, in recent years this phenomenon has accelerated significantly. Although migration of health care professionals also takes place between poor nations and between wealthy nations, a larger number of professionals are moving from poor nations to rich nations.

This kind of movement has been criticized heavily in recent years because of the effects it has particularly on poor nations. The authors note that many poor nations are loosing critically needed nurses, doctors, physicians, and other health-care practitioners. The loss of these workers has made the situation desperate for many poor nations who as a result cannot adequately meet the health care needs of their people. The authors point out that the under funding and the dysfunctional nature of the health-care systems of many poor nations leads to major flows of labor to wealth nations. Thus, global labor market is disproportionately tilted towards nations that are affluent and that provide the kinds of compensations and opportunities that are a big draw to highly trained professionals.

The authors highlight the problem of the shortage of health-care workers in both developing nations and developed nations. In the case of developed nations, the imbalance is occasioned by a greater demand of health care workers whereas supply is not keeping up. A rising ageing population who have a significantly higher need of health care is met with fewer workers joining the health care profession. Another cause for the shortage is the soaring malpractice insurance rates that have driven away many physicians. In developing nations the shortage of health care workers is mainly caused by lack of resources to train or retrain health care workers and also poor working conditions for those who are already working in the health care field.

The authors note that major migration is among English speaking countries. In the year 2001-2002 there were over 7,000 Philipino nurses who migrated to the United Kingdom while there were over 2,000 nurses who came from South Africa. Australia contributed over 1,000 nurses while from India came over 900 nurses.

As has been noted above, there are costs and benefits to the migration of health-care workers from one country to another. The benefits often accrue to the individuals and to the receiving nations who are able to fill in needed workers where there are critical shortages. However what has been the case is that the costs have often been greater for developing nations who lose valuable human resources that they sorely need. In addition resources that are used to train these departing professionals are often taken away from other critically needed services within the country including education, infrastructure development and social service provision. In the United States, the hiring of foreign workers has centered on the effects it has on labor practices and working conditions for local workers. Issues here include the potential erosion of employment conditions and depressed wages.

Given the high costs that developing nations face when there workers migrate to wealthier nations, there has be an international call to deal with this issue that many have a called a moral and ethical issue of our time. One of the suggestions that has been floated is for developing nations to require the health-care professionals who are planning to emigrate to make a “repayment” commitment in form of a required period of public service especially for those health care workers whose training was publicly funded. Developing nations have also been urged by the world community to increase their investment in the health care sector particularly by working at improving the working conditions of health care workers and also providing better compensation as an incentive to stay within their own countries.

However, on the whole it is an agreed fact that something ought to be done to address the overall issue of negative migration of health care workers from developing nations to developed nations. On a global scale, many solutions have been proposed including passing regulation limiting the number of health care professional who can emigrate to wealthy nations. This solution has however met with resistance because it infringes on the rights of individuals to make their personal choices as to where to live and work. In addition market advocates contend that the current labor movement is a result of the market forces at work that lead people to move where the need and demand for their services is.

Developed nations like the United States and the United Kingdom have been urged to help developing nations to improve their overall social, physical and economic infrastructures as a means to stem the outflow of workers. This particularly important because historically developed nations have faced an unfair terms of trade in the world market with the consequences being devastating for these nations. In addition United States and other developed nations have been urged to support a global fund that would fund the training of health-care workers in developing nations negatively impacted by migration.

These and many other strategies will hopefully address some of the critical issues surrounding the global market of health care professionals.


REFERENCE

Clark, P.F., Clark, D.A., & Stewart, J. B. (2006). The globalization of the labor market
for health-care professionals. International Labour Review, 145(2) 37-64