Improving recruitment programs in the healthcare sector to tackle the challenges of tomorrow – International recruitment pilot – Filipino nurses

The Finnish government ruled in 2020 that for every patient in care there should be at least 0,7 nurses. This so called “hoitajamitoitus” was set to go into effect in April of 2023. However, at the beginning of 2023 the actual number of nurses in Finland was lagging significantly behind this desired goal. According to Ilari Nurminen a member of parliament for the social democratic party Finland would have to be able to recruit 3400 more nurses from the start of the year 2023 to reach this goal by April. However, these recruitment numbers seem to not have come to fruition yet and the date for the “hoitajamitoitus” has now been pushed back to December of 2023. (Source: Yle)

For the various wellbeing services counties around Finland this means finding new and innovative solutions for the recruitment of new nurses. This is why Laurea has partnered up with the City of Espoo and the Western Uusimaa Wellbeing Services County to help them improve their current recruitment program, that recruits hopeful nurses from the Philippines and trains them in Finland to hopefully become nurses here.

Our project group consists of five students from Finland and Spain. Our objective in this project is to be a neutral party studying the Filipino nurses and their workplace instructors’ views on this recruitment process and how it has worked so far. The end goal for our project is to help Western Uusimaa Wellbeing Services County improve their current recruitment program to the Philippines as well as addressing any shortcomings that the program currently has.

This project was started in January of 2023 when the student group working on this project received instructions from Western Uusimaa Wellbeing Services County on what we were doing and what the purpose for this student project was. The first step in our project was filing a research permit application for the type of research that we were doing. This meant figuring out what we were studying and why as well as what we would ask from the nurses and workplace instructors. Then we prepared our data collection tools and sent invitations to our interviewees before conducting the interviews. Now we are at the stage that we can move onto analyzing our findings before compiling them into representative form and presenting our findings to Western Uusimaa Wellbeing Services County.

Laurea and Western Uusimaa Wellbeing Services County logos.

From a student’s perspective this has been a fantastically educative project we have gotten to delve deep into the process of conducting research and all that that entails. Through this process we have learned lots of new things as well as improved our language skills by getting to work in an international environment. On behalf of all the students in this project I wish everyone a fantastic spring and summer as well as luck in your future studies.

Suurin osa Showcasen blogeista on toteutettu osana Laurean opintojaksoja. Koko koulutustarjontaamme voi tutustua nettisivuillamme. Tarjoamme kymmenien tutkintoon johtavien koulutuksien lisäksi myös paljon täydennys- ja erikoistumiskoulutuksia sekä yksittäisiä opintojaksoja avoimen AMK:n kautta!

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