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Learning Objective 1: To recognize factors affecting the transition and relocation of internationally educated nurses migrating to the US.
Learning Objective 2: To understand the transition experiences of foreign nurses.
The sample was a non-random convenience sample of IENs who migrated to the US. The setting was the professional community of nurses in the US. Subject recruitment was done by 1) e-mail announcements and a link to the online survey by key gatekeepers, 2) organizational webpage postings, or 3) flyers/emails to IENs by published nurse migration experts.
Findings on IEN transition and relocation experiences provided support for the validity of the Ibitayo (2009) model, Migration and Transition of Internationally Educated Nurses. The desired endpoint of transition experiences in the Ibitayo model was professional satisfaction. The Ibitayo model guided data analysis and discussion of findings.
The majority of IENs in this study had been in the US for several years and experienced high professional satisfaction. Other concepts of the Ibitayo model provided a schema for discovering what IEN experiences and personal characteristics contributed to the high professional satisfaction. In their open-ended comments several IENs indicated they desired transition programs both in their source countries and their destination countries.
This study added to the nurse migration knowledge base by providing a greater understanding of foreign nurses’ relocation and transition experiences in the US. It described the successful integration of foreign nurses from around the world into the US healthcare workforce.