Some 200 nurses selected for possible US recruitment
By Miranda La Rose
Stabroek News
July 11, 2002
Of the approximately 500 nurses who applied to Compass International, a recruiting agency, just under 200 have been selected and they will now have to write an examination to qualify for a job in the United States.
Compass arrived in Guyana a month ago and according to its Nurse/Educator, Linda Cox, received applications from all over Guyana, including the hinterland, Linden and Berbice. Applicants from all of these areas were selected after they went through a “really stringent process of interviewing and taking a pre test.”
Cox said that the applicants selected were now required to take the national test in San Juan, Puerto Rico. “My goal is that everyone will pass [the test], but the reality is not everyone will pass.”
The examination period is between November and December, after which it would take another 12 months for the nurses to get their green cards. “So the whole process is minimum 18 months,” Cox told Stabroek News yesterday.
At present, Cox holds classes with the selected nurses on Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday at the Ocean View Convention Centre, preparing them for the examination at the end of the year. There are other nurses who are not recruited who also attend Cox’s classes.
According to Cox, the goal of Compass International is to educate nurses and that is her role here. “I come in for one week for three months in a row,” she said.
The educator said that the agency also attempts to give back to the community, resources that will help other nurses, and in this regard has donated three books to the Georgetown School of Nursing in East Street.
Questioned as to why her agency chose Guyana to recruit nurses, Cox disclosed that Compass was in St Lucia and nurses from Guyana who reside on that island said: “You need to go to Guyana, I have friends down there that are excellent nurses, you can give them a chance to fulfil their dreams.”
She said she had never heard of Guyana before then.
“Their peers in St Lucia were talking highly about them, so that is why we came to Guyana, because they asked us to,” she said.
She said that Compass International had contracts with many hospitals in the United States and when the nurses travel to the US they would be hired by the individual hospitals. “It is called direct placement,” she said.
Cox added that the agency would probably be back to recruit more nurses in the next 18 months.
When it was pointed out to her that her agency was taking some of Guyana’s trained nurses, Cox had this to say, “What I look at is that these nurses want to come to the United States and if I can provide a pathway for them I would and I will. They are going to come to the United States whether it is through me or someone else. The positive thing is the financial gain that they would be bringing back into the country; the education for their children and my goal is I really want to see that the people in Guyana can see nursing as a career.” (Samantha Alleyne)