South African nurses' reasons for working in foreign countries: An e-mail semi-structured questionnaire survey

Abstract

In 2001 South Africa had an estimated shortage of 20 000 nurses (Ka Mzolo, 2001). This was Partly due to nurses' emigrating to work in other countries such as the United Kingdom (UK) which recruits large numbers of these nurses (Hampshire, 2001). Although the exact numbers are unknown, many South African nurses are working in Australia, New Zealand, and the United States of America (USA) and in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) in addition to the UK. A descriptive qualitative research design was adopted to find out the reasons why nurses leave South Africa and under what conditions they would be willing to return. Semi-structured (open-ended) questions were sent by e-mail to all available addresses of expatriate South African nurses. Each e-mail recipient was requested to send the e-mail to other South African nurses known to him/her (amounting to snowball sampling) and to return the completed questionnaire to the sender. The results were analysed qualitatively and contextualised within Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. The major factor that influenced South African nurses to emigrate was inadequate remuneration, rendering nurses unable to meet their physiological needs in South Africa, succeeded by the lack of safety and security. The major factors preventing their return to South Africa were their perceived inabilities to meet their esteem and self actualisation needs in South Africa. Improved salaries might enable more South African nurses to remain in this country. However, expatriate nurses are unlikely to return to South Africa if nurses' salaries were improved, unless their esteem and self-actualisation needs could also be met at the same levels as in the foreign countries.