Watching nurse Mindy Green demonstrate electronic patient charting technology at WellStar Douglas Hospital are Ukrainian visitors Vyacheslav Gryorobych Peredyeriy, left, and Andriy Volodymyrovych Pideav, center, along with interpreter Oksana Gupalo and hospital administrator Michael Poore.

At WellStar Cobb Hospital, it’s not unusual to see signs translated into Spanish. But last month, Ukrainian was de rigueur.

Staff were given crib sheets with the Ukrainian equivalent of greetings such as “nice to see you” and “good day.” A banner that read “Laskavo prosymo” — “welcome” in English — graced the entrance of the Austell hospital’s Women’s Center.

WellStar Health System’s five hospitals in Cobb, Paulding and Douglas counties welcomed two Ukrainian physicians — one a deputy minister of health care for Ukraine and the other a former minister of health care — as part of an ongoing relationship between WellStar and the former Soviet republic. It’s an international liaison that, by early next year, will blossom into a program that could bring as many as 1,000 nurses from Ukraine to work at WellStar’s hospitals over the next three to four years, according to WellStar officials.

WellStar has 2,700 nurses on staff, but that is not enough to keep up with the demand. U.S. nursing schools are not producing enough nurses, creating a nationwide shortage. There’s going to be continuing demand for nurses in the area WellStar serves as the population continues to age and grow and as the Medicare-aged population is expected to grow by 17 percent over the next five years, said Nina Evans, director of nursing at WellStar Cobb Hospital.

In February, WellStar CEO Robert Lipson and his vice president of nursing services traveled to Ukraine to visit hospitals and nursing programs, kicking off a dialogue between WellStar and Ukrainian officials.

The visiting physicians said that Ukrainian nurses are well-educated, but they are not exposed to the great technology that hospitals have access to in the United States.

To be able to work in the United States, the nurses need to pass examinations, including an English test, and get licensed. They will come over on occupational immigration visas.

The first group of nurses is expected to start working at Cobb Hospital the first or second quarter of next year, and they would start at the surgical unit, Evans said.

In Ukraine, nurses are paid about $60 a month and have to take care of 15 to 25 patients at a time, the visiting doctors said.

During their weeklong visit, Dr. Vyacheslav Gryorobych Peredyeriy, Ukraine’s deputy minister of health care, and Andriy Volodymyrovych Pideav, former minister of health care and president of the International Promotional Center of Reforms in Healthcare, toured WellStar facilities.

They also visited Kennesaw State University’s nursing school. The physicians were accompanied by an interpreter from Ukraine and by Mikhail Nudelman, a native Ukrainian who has lived in Georgia since 1979.

Impressed and amazed
Nudelman is CEO of Professional Resources International Inc., a Duluth-based company that was instrumental in bringing WellStar and the Ukrainian officials together.

Peredyeriy and Pideav were impressed with the quality of care at the hospitals and the new technology, especially computerized stations that allow doctors to share patients’ records with other providers.

They were amazed at the number of lab tests that a doctor can order, the infinite number of drugs that can be prescribed, touch screens and the wireless computers on wheels that Cobb Hospital uses to register patients in the emergency room, said those who followed the two men during their visit. They were also impressed with the smaller size of hospitals in this country, compared to huge hospitals in Ukraine.

“The United States health care system is absolutely superior,” Peredyeriy said in Ukrainian through Nudelman.

The physicians said they were impressed with the kindness and openness of the medical staff they met while touring WellStar’s hospitals. “Your hospitals are something to be proud about,” said Peredyeriy, who was visiting the United States for the first time.

They will take some of the lessons learned back to Ukraine, which last fall made headlines worldwide for its peaceful Orange Revolution that forced the government to call for a new presidential vote after rigged elections.

The fresh elections put a pro-Western reformist, Viktor Yushchenko, in power.

The country of 47 million people, in the crossroads between Asia and Europe, is undergoing economic and political reforms. The health care system is in the early stages of being reformed. Pideav described through an interpreter the Ukrainian health care
system as “still government-sponsored, with a structure of pyramid, commandtype, under the Ministry of Health.”

The system has 24,000 medical institutions and employs 1.2 million people.

“The system is extremely big and underfunded,” Pideav said, noting Ukraine spends only $30 a year per person for health care.

The Ukrainian nurses will spend three years in the United States, receiving U.S. wages, and then go back to Ukraine so they can make a contribution to the country’s health care system.

— This article is a reprint from The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.