The Ministry of Health and Wellness is reporting that advertisements it placed abroad for specialist nurses to work in Jamaica’s hospitals have received 134 responses, 26 of which are from Jamaicans.

“Two of the 26 are nurses who left the system to work in the United Kingdom in 2023, with one application from a British nurse who worked in Jamaica before. Others are from several countries,” the ministry told the Jamaica Observer on Thursday, adding that the advertisements were placed in the UK, United States, and Canada.

Responding to the development, Health and Wellness Minister Dr Christopher Tufton said he was happy to see the number of Jamaican nurses seeking to return home.

“It is good that our own people see it fit not only to come back and prop up the health system, but to assist in the building of a great nation. The Government looks forward to having them here as quickly as possible and will ensure that they are properly settled in,” Tufton said.

The news comes weeks after Dr Cheryl Morgan, who migrated in 2009 after graduating as a registered nurse from The University of the West Indies, told the Observer that she would not answer a call by Tufton for nurses who had migrated to return home and work in the public health sector.

She said Tufton’s call had raised eyebrows among Jamaican nurses in the US, noting that she and her migrant colleagues had left to seek better salaries, benefits and work environments in America, Canada, England, and even other Caribbean islands.

“The reality is that nurses are treated poorly in Jamaica by various governments. I was tired of seeing nurses demonstrating with placards every time they should get a salary increase. When I was a nurse in Jamaica, nurses were just poor,” Morgan told the Observer.

Tufton had thrown the invites out during recent visits to Washington, DC; New York; and Miami, and said that he would be formalising it through actual advertising and promotion.

Making the case for their return, he pointed to improvements in the country’s infrastructure, ongoing hospital upgrades, efforts to reduce crime, and the opportunity for individuals to have more disposable income, saying it had made Jamaica increasingly attractive as a place to live and work.

“What this means, I believe — and I’m saying so with a lot of faith and conviction and hope — is that some of the very Jamaicans who have left our shores for greener pastures will reconsider and return to our shores,” he said.

“… And we are saying to Jamaicans who live in the Diaspora — whether it is in Canada, the UK, the USA or elsewhere — ‘Come back home. We have a place for you in the health system within the areas, obviously, where we are short of specialists. We will find a way to incentivise you to relocate. We will work with you because we would like all those posts to be filled by Jamaicans who have left us — which is their right so to do,’” Tufton appealed.

He also said he would be focusing on nurses who have not yet been lured away from Jamaica, stating that there would be a housing programme for staff across the country and more training opportunities.

But he insisted that some positions were difficult to fill because of the location and the specialised skills required.

Tufton also acknowledged that the shortage had resulted in some staff being overworked.

On Thursday he told the Observer that the advertisements will continue, especially considering construction of the adolescent hospital in St James, expansion at Cornwall Regional and Spanish Town hospitals, and upgrading of several primary care facilities.

“The result of this kind of pilot exercise where we have actively sought to recruit members of the Diaspora and others who may be interested to come in and fill gaps that we have in our health system, which we have been unable to fill locally, is hopefully going to have to be the norm as we seek to correct significant imbalance in our system where in the past migration has been one-way in order to satisfy the demands of our health system and other areas of economic activity in the country,” Tufton said.

“I’m pleased that in health, there are Jamaicans and others outside of Jamaica who see Jamaica as a place where they can come, live, work, and raise their families. It’s something that we want to encourage as we seek to satisfy the demand to support health needs in the country,” he added.

The ministry said that of the 134 applicants, 42 are registered nurses, including 16 Jamaicans; 14 peri-operative/OT; 12 registered nurses/midwives; 12 specialists who work in psychiatric/mental health, including a Jamaican currently working in Canada; 10 in critical care, including one Jamaican working in the UK; nine in paediatric/neonatology, including a Jamaican based in the UK; six in ophthalmic care; six in nephrology; five in public health nursing; five specialists in accident and emergency, including a Jamaican in the United Kingdom; and four nursing educators, including a Jamaican in the UK.

The respondents also include people trained in nursing informatics, medical/surgical, cardiology, among other specialist areas.