New Zealand health recruiters usually receive two to three queries a day from US nurses but — in the wake of the assassination attempt of Donald Trump — one agency has seen a spike of more than 220 inquiries.
Accent Health Recruitment managing director Prudence Thomson said the inquiries came with a much keener tone than usual.
She told Breakfast this morning US citizens are "really positive" about the people in New Zealand, and some who had made inquiries to move had visited the country before.
"They want to bring their skills. We’ve got radiologists who have practised in the US for 20 or 30 years, and they want to come.
“Immigration is actually a very positive pathway to come here. The Medical Council sees their skills as very comparable, and we’ve got the openings. We’ve got the need for health professionals.
"There is a global shortage, they could go anywhere — but they love New Zealand, they want to be here.”
In May, 1News reported that figures released by Health NZ Te Whatu Ora under the Official Information Act showed 26% of nursing shifts in New Zealand were below target staffing numbers last year.
Last week, frontline nurses told 1News that conditions for patients and staff in Northland hospitals wre deteriorating rapidly — and feared Government cutbacks on staffing may cost someone their life.
Earlier this month, General Practice New Zealand chair Dr Bryan Betty told RNZ that keeping the numbers of doctors up had been a losing battle for some time.
"General practice and general practitioner shortages through the country... have been developing over the last decade, and we're reaching the point where it's directly affecting patients' access to medical care in the community."
According to a briefing to the minister in January by Te Whatu Ora, New Zealand is currently short 485 GPs, with the gap to grow to between between 753 and 1043 doctors in the next decade.
Thomson said she hoped to recruit at least 50 of the 220 who inquired from the US over the next 24 months.
"It will be a little bit of a knee-jerk reaction, as it is when there is an event in the US… it’s a long process… it takes a while for them to get here, we have to go through all the due diligence. We have to check their medical histories, criminal histories… make sure their skills align brilliantly with New Zealand."
Thomson said the most needed medical professionals in New Zealand currently are radiologists, psychiatrists, emergency workers, mental health workers, those who specialise in theatre, and GPs.
"We’re doing a lot of travel to the US at the moment and looking for those kind of skills."
Thomson said from around the world, she gets up to 100 inquiries every day, and they looked at "comparable" health systems such as South Africa, the UK, Canada, the US, and Singapore.
"I think around of the time of the [US] elections, it will flare up again, and depending on what happens with the elections of course, we will get some pretty amazing medical staff in New Zealand."
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