Nurse education and the labour market: an Israeli case study

The article explores the demand structure for nursing in Israel by analysing socio-demographic trends within the nursing-student population at one Israeli university. The main findings are that many of the new recruits to academic nursing programmes in the late 1990s came from two somewhat marginal sub-populations: immigrants from the Former Soviet Union (FSU) and Israeli Palestinians. The high, yet decreasing percentage of the former category and the rise in the latter are interpreted in terms of competing forces in the local labour market in general, and in the healthcare field in particular. The article points to possible links between the structure of nurse education (length of training, relative advantage of university graduates) and broader political processes that have taken place in the Israeli arena during these years.