Nursing Professions Mexico In ancient times, the sick and the unwell were generally cared for in temples or other houses of worship, and this tradition continued until the early Christian era, when certain women of the Church would take up the care of the sick and the diseased people, and their services would sometimes be extended to their homes as well. These women of the Church had no real training at all, but they were experienced, and that is what mattered in those times. These were women who were extremely skilled in the use of various herbs and drugs, and they started to gain fame as 'physicians' in their era. In late years, nursing duties were undertaken by relatively uneducated and ignorant women, until the seventeenth century, when St. Vincent de Paul started to stress on the fact that these women must undertake some form of training if they were to nurse the sick and the ailing. (Nursing, Medicine)

It was in the year 1846 that a formal Training School for Nursing was established in Kaiserwerth, Germany. This is the Training School where Florence Nightingale underwent her training, and this in fact enabled her to establish her school for training nurses, rather than to nurse patients, and this was the St. Thomas Hospital in London. Soon similar schools were established in New York and Boston. Thereafter, nursing became a very important profession for women, until the beginnings of the 'feminist movement' during the early years of the 1950's and 1960's until, eventually, the late twentieth century saw the beginning of a shortage of nurses due to a variety of reasons, some of them being that their salaries were at a stagnant level, the workloads were increasing, and several different job opportunities for women were on the rise. Therefore, there were fewer numbers of enrolments for the nursing profession, and today, it stands at this level. (Nursing, Medicine)

In an Article by CBS News on the nursing profession, published in Mexico City on June 29, 2004, it has been stated that because of the shortage of nurses in the United States of America, the government of the U.S.A. has been sending various recruiters to Mexico and also to other poorer countries, so that the trained nurses from those parts of the world may be drafted into the nursing profession in the Unites States. The article goes on to state that this type of recruitment of nurses form outside may end up putting even more of a financial strain on the already strained situation of the problem of 'health care' in the developing world. In fact, the U.S. authorities have issued repeated warnings that the U.S.A. could fall short of about 275,000 nurses by the end of the year 2010, if the situation were not reversed immediately, and for the most part, this would probably be because of the additional strain and health care burden that the growing number of elderly people are placing on the situation. (Foreign Nurses sought to fill void)

However, recruiters from the U.S.A. have long ago found help from the Philippines, and here, the U.S.A. has already established schools with the purpose of training nurses so that they may be able to work in America when they finish their training. In a similar manner, the health care personnel from India, South Korea and Nigeria have also been looked at, and are in the process of being tapped for being sent to work in the United States of America. However, today, the primary focus is on the nurses in Mexico, who, if they were to work in America, would be of great help to the growing numbers of Hispanic population in the U.S. In fact, a Mexican nurse would not only understand and speak the same language of Latin Americans, but would also live in the same way as them, and this would be a huge advantage for the patient and for his family. Mexican nurses, if they were to work in America, would in fact be able to earn about ten times as much as they would normally earn in their own homeland, and this would be enough of an incentive for the Mexican nurses. As one nurse put it, "My motivation, more than anything, is economic," the nurse who would earn about $350 a month on the night shift in her home town.

Encouraged by the prospects in the United States, the nurse, Sanjuana Sanchez, has started o study English, so that she may be prepared for working in America when the time came. She also says, "My goal is to get to the United States...

has still not caught up as it had been expected, and statistics show that it is still in the very early stages; in fact, just 58 nurses wrote the U.S. Nurse Licensing Exam in 2002, according to the figures available at the National Council of State Boards of Nursing. Out of the 58 who wrote the exam, only about 28% managed to pass, that is, about 16 out of the 58 who wrote the exam, and this was well below the average for the percentage of passes for non-English speaking countries, which generally fare better at these exams. However, this has not stopped the Mexican nurses from studying and preparing better in order to leave their country for the U.S.A. (Foreign Nurses sought to fill void)
Allison Squires, MSN, RM, BC, is a student at the Yale University School of Nursing. This is what she has to say about the nursing profession in Mexico: She feels that, studying as she does in a country where there is a well-developed nursing profession, all the nurses have a professional and a social responsibility to help their peers or colleagues in other countries who are studying for the same profession, amidst large scale challenges to health, and who are literally struggling hard to cope with these challenges. Allison's interests lie in the development and the sustained growth of the nursing profession in developing countries, and why she has so much interest in nursing in Mexico is because when she herself had been an under graduate student of nursing in the University of Pennsylvania, she had to travel abroad to Oaxaca, in Mexico, where she discovered for herself the real state of international health care, while in Mexico, and made her feel that she had in fact finally found her 'nursing niche'. (Allison Squires: Yale School of Nursing, Admissions)

The health care and all the various service disparities that are evident in the developing world was a completely different experience for this young nurse, and what she feels is that living and working in an international system of health care made her appreciate the various struggles that even an immigrant patient of her hospital would feel when he was attempting to migrate to the U.S. health care system, and attempting to communicate in an unknown language was an eye opener for her, and it was because of the experience of living in Mexico that she could understand the language problem that immigrants face all the time. (Allison Squires: Yale School of Nursing, Admissions) What Allison Squires is referring to is the so-called 'transcultural' learning experience wherein a team of nurses would be sent to a developing country, like for example, Mexico, so that they would be able to learn first hand the situation outside their own country. Living and learning in this manner is an enriching experience for these nurses, who are given the option of choosing the country they want to visit and work in. (Transcultural Nursing, the Mexican experience.)

In Mexico, the issue of fundraising for any purpose, even for non-profit organizations, is a complicated task. This is because, in Mexico, fundraising has never been popular, and has not been widely practiced. There is not only a restrictive legal framework that prevents and inhibits fund raising activities, but also a restrictive tax framework that further inhibits these activities, and according to the American British Cowdray School of Nursing, or the ABCSN, a non-profit school that is affiliated with a local Mexican Hospital and University, the subject of fundraising is virtually ignored in Mexico. There is, in addition, a lack of the basic knowledge about fund raising that would be required if it were to be successful, especially for non-profit organizations. The American British Cowdray School of Nursing was founded in the year 1956 in order to support the professional training of nurses in the state of Mexico, and particularly for the ABC Medical Center. The School of Nursing is considered to be one of the best schools in Mexico, and it has been a popular school for those individuals wanting to train to be professional nurses. (Case Study of the American British School of Nursing, ABCSN)

However, it must be remembered that the field of nursing in Mexico, is, at this present time, under a lot of stress, and for a large number of reasons. On an average, the…