Overseas recruitment: experiences of nurses immigrating to Newfoundland and Labrador, 1949-2004

Overseas recruitment of nurses has been part of health-care in Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada for over a century. The International Grenfell Association began recruiting overseas in 1893 for nursing stations in Labrador and from the 1920s to 1940s, overseas recruitment was used to provide nurses for rural areas of the province. Beginning in the 1950s, government and provincial hospitals used this strategy to resolve nursing shortages as did Memorial University to attract faculty for the new nursing degree programme that started in the 1960s. Today, overseas recruitment continues for nurse midwives. Overseas recruitment brought challenges for those who came, for local nurses and for the profession. Many nurses returned home but others opted to stay. Overseas recruitment and the contribution these nurses made to nursing and health-care in Newfoundland and Labrador are significant but undocumented parts of our history. We undertook an oral history project to document their experiences, explore the challenges of overseas recruitment and preserve this record of nursing history. Forty-one nurses who immigrated to Newfoundland and Labrador between 1949 and 2004 and practised in all regions and settings were interviewed. Analysis of the data identified themes related to the nurses' immigration experience and adaptation to the culture and health-care of Newfoundland and Labrador.