BACKGROUND: Fewer Finnish nurses moving abroad
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By Tiina Rajamäki
At the end of 2005 there were 4,100 Finnish nurses under the age of 62 working abroad. If all health care professionals are included, the figure would exceed 6,000.
According to figures put out by the National Research and Development Centre for Welfare and Health (STAKES), the number of nurses emigrating from Finland began to decline already in 2001.
Overwhelmingly the greatest amount of Finnish nurses abroad - about 40 percent - are now in Sweden. Norway has the second largest amount of Finnish nurses - about 15 percent of the total, or 640 individuals.
Norway was the number one destination of all Finnish nurses in the late 1990s, until 2000, when Sweden bypassed Norway in recruiting Finnish nurses.
Whereas 265 Finnish nurses moved to Norway in 1998, last year the number was 40.
Now there are plans in Finland to actively try to persuade Finnish nurses who have moved abroad to come back to Finland. It is especially difficult to find substitutes for nurses.
"It doesn't sound good", says Fritz Solhaug, when he hears that Finnish employers are hoping to persuade nurses to come back to Finland.
After Sweden and Norway, the greatest numbers of expatriate Finnish nurses are working in the UK, Switzerland, Germany, the United States, Denmark, Canada, and Spain. About half of them return home after working abroad for about two years.
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 18.4.2006
More on this subject:
 Nurses leave Norway to send children to Finnish school
FACTFILE: Nurses in Norway have more money to live on
TIINA RAJAMÄKI / Helsingin Sanomat
tiina.rajamaki@hs.fi
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