The nurse working beside you could be from the Philippines, India, Canada or several other countries. In an effort to offset the shortage of nurses in the United States, more American hospitals are recruiting nurses from around the world.

Globalization has come to nursing, raising new opportunities and concerns in the profession worldwide.

Last month in Chicago and San Francisco, the American Nurses Association and the International Centre on Nurse Migration (a commission of the International Council of Nurses) held a joint conference on creating a positive work environment and facilitating the successful integration of internationally recruited nurses. A similar conference was held in London in February.

In 2005, Mireille Kingma, Ph.D., a nurse consultant with the International Council of Nurses, investigated this growing trend and published "Nurses on the Move: Migration and the Global Health Care Economy" (Cornell University Press, $49.95).

According to the book, nurses migrate to other countries for a variety of reasons: a better quality of life, more skills and training, professional development and advancement, and a higher income. They face the challenges of immigrating and adapting to a new job and a new way of life.

Nurse recruiters wrestle with the costs, the legal and ethical ramifications, and how best to make it work for nurses and patients. An International Council of Nurses position paper on ethical nurse recruitment notes that "globalization will increasingly highlight the importance of human resources planning and development at the international level."

It costs more to locate and hire a nurse from another country ($6,000 to $25,000 per nurse in a 2004 estimate), and the process can take several years, but hospitals that have found the right recipe for recruiting, training and retaining international nurses say that it can be a more cost-effective way to fill jobs than relying on traveling and agency nurses.

This month, Pulse talked to officials at three Georgia hospitals that have done their homework and have successfully added international recruiting to their staffing strategies.

"It takes a good training program and a strong support system to help these nurses adapt, but if those things are in place, the process can be very beneficial," said Jaymie Solomon, manager of recruitment at St. Joseph's Hospital in Atlanta, which has been recruiting nurses from the Philippines for five years and hires other foreign-born nurses who are already living in the United States. "We're getting very experienced nurses who fully want to be here."

One benefit of hiring foreign-born nurses is having a hospital staff that's as culturally diverse as the patient population, said Susan Axelrod, RN, nurse manager of Unit 4-West and Dialysis at St. Joseph's Hospital. "When you take away our appearances and accents, we all have the same basic characteristics inside. We teach each other, and it broadens all our perspectives."

CELEBRATING NURSES: There's growing excitement about The Atlanta Journal-Constitution's and ajcjobs' second annual Celebrating Nurses event on May 9. Last year's event was a true celebration of nursing, and this year promises to be the same. Judges tell me that there have been more nominations than last year and that nominees represent a broader range of nursing specialties and workplaces.

This year's banquet will be at 11:30 a.m. at the new North Tower of the Omni Hotel in downtown Atlanta. Melissa Carter, co-host of Atlanta's "Bert Show" on All the Hits Q100, is the keynote speaker. For tickets to this year's banquet and recognition of the winners, visit www.celebratingnurses.eventbrite.com or www.ajcjobs.com and click on Celebrating Nurses. Hope to see you there.

Don't miss the Celebrating Nurses special section that will run in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution on May 6. The section will include stories about the nursing profession and profiles of all 10 finalists for the Celebrating Nurses awards.

- Do you have any story ideas for Pulse? Tell us about your career and what you do after hours. Send e-mail to pulseeditor@ajc.com or call 404-526-2078.