title: The potent lever of toil: nursing development and exportation in the postcolonial Philippines.
abstract: Although the colonial relationship between the Philippines and the United States precipitated nurse education and migration patterns that exist today, little is known about the factors that sustained them. During the first half of the twentieth century, for example, the Philippines trained its nurse workforce primarily for domestic use. After the country's independence in 1946, however, that practice reversed. Nurse education in the Philippines was driven largely by US market demand in tandem with local messages linking work and nationalism and explicit policies to send nurses abroad. As these ideologies and practices became firmly entrenched, nurse production not only exceeded the country's numerical requirements but focused largely on preparing practitioners for the health care needs of developed nations rather than the public health needs of the indigenous population. This historical trend has important present-day ramifications for the Philippines, whose continued exodus of nurses threatens its public health.
authors.affiliation: University of Michigan School of Nursing, 400 North Ingalls, Room 3304, Ann Arbor, MI 48109, USA. brushb@umich.edu
authors.forename: Barbara L
authors.initials: BL
authors.lastname: Brush
mesh_terms: D019049:Developed Countries; D003906:Developing Countries; D004641:Emigration and Immigration / Q000266:history* / Q000639:trends*; D005551:Foreign Professional Personnel / Q000266:history* / Q000600:supply & distribution*; D049673:History, 20th Century; D049674:History, 21st Century; D006801:Humans; D009740:Nursing Staff / Q000266:history* / Q000600:supply & distribution*; D010679:Philippines; D014481:United States