Trends, motivations and experiences of Czech migrant nurses: a mixed methods study

Abstract

The migration of nurses is currently an important political theme, and it is only expected to intensify in the future, because of the current demographic trends. Considering the facilitating policies and the differences between salaries, the intra-European migration of nurses is rather small, but its monitoring is not very exact. The migration of Czech general care nurses remains under-researched. I used mixed research with explorative sequential design in this study. In the initial embedded qualitative strand, I interviewed informants with expert knowledge on the migration of Czech nurses. The second quantitative strand consisted of a survey of self-selected Czech migrating nurses using an electronic questionnaire. The last strand used a focus group technique with Czech nursing migrants to clarify some of the previously researched topics. Some findings from this study are similar to the previously conducted research, and some differ substantially. Almost all of the respondents and participants felt that their professional skills improved because of their migration. More than half eventually returned to the Czech Republic, often they provided direct care in the Czech Republic, and mostly they reported not being able to utilize all of the new knowledge gained abroad. The main destination country was Saudi Arabia, therefore the respondents often cooperated with a recruiting agency. Their families were typically not involved in the decision to migrate and the migrants only rarely sent remittances home. Instead, they invested their earnings in real estate. Consistent with the literature, the professional communication in a foreign language and the different nursing practices of the destination country were rated as difficult. Findings from all three strands suggested that the nurses were transformed by the migration. It is generally understood that nurses are vital for providing health care services, thus we should offer them motivating working conditions to prevent more extensive migration and use the potential of brain circulation.