Hospital staffing crisis: foreign nurses already in the US can now be hired more easily in New York

NYC Health + Hospitals/Elmhurst: 7901 Broadway, Queens.

Photo: Mariela Lombard / The NY Journal

To counter the nursing shortage in the hospital system, New York City is training and certifying bilingual professionals already in the US who have previously held nursing positions in their countries of origin, so that they can start working faster if they want to stay in that field of work.

The training and certification of personnel with international experience is essential to meet the needs of the health care system and this is what the “New York Alliance for Careers in Healthcare (NYACH)” program aims to do.

“I love being a nurse and I want to be a nurse here. That is my passion,” she told Pix11 Ecuadorian Irene Huachi, 59, who emigrated to the US two decades ago, but he did not practice his profession once more due to complicated and costly regulations.

She has now applied to be trained and certified as a New York nurse through the new initiative of the Department of Small Business Services (SBS). Internationally trained nurses now living in New York can enroll in free classes at LaGuardia Community College in Queens or Lehman College in the Bronx, with full- and part-time options.

Applicants must have a nursing degree from a non-English speaking country, be proficient in English or willing to learn it, live in New York City, be vaccinated once morest COVID-19, and have Internet access for training.

Books, preparation, access to the program and the exam are free. Once hired, nurses can earn around $100,000 dollars annually. The city is accepting applications now. More information on the official portal.