An upcoming visit to the Island by a group recruiting nurses for assignments in the United States has raised concerns within the Bermuda Hospital Board.

Yesterday, recruitment agency Assignment America began running local advertisements aimed at registered nurses with one year of experience offering "the most generous compensation and benefits package in the industry".

The advert said a recruiter will on Island next month to make presentations and field inquiries.

"We're quite concerned about it," BHB chairman Edward Saunders told The Royal Gazette yesterday.

"It's unfortunate they want to draw from what little staff we have here. We're tapping all the sources we can to get good nurses and keep them so, obviously it is a cause for concern."

Mr. Saunders said he'd not yet seen the advertisement yesterday although he had received a number of calls about it.

There is a worldwide shortage of nurses, he added, and BHB is considering a number of incentives to try and keep nursing staff on the Island in addition to new pay packages which were agreed upon last year.

Just one year ago, Bermuda's 500-odd nurses threatened to strike if their pay packages were not improved but that action was narrowly averted when nurses and BHB agreed on new terms in May.

"Last year we did make initiatives to nurses and upped some rates," Mr. Saunders said. "In particular we upped some of the lower rates to make the profession attractive. We realise that nursing is not easy. It is a very stressful profession so its important to offer all sorts of incentives to try and keep them here.

"We're in competition with the entire world."

One of the particular struggles for Bermuda's nurses has been the high cost of housing on the Island, Mr. Saunders said.

"We're really looking at improving housing right now," he said. "We've just finished renovations to the nursing residence at Queen Elizabeth.

"A lot of housing is out of reach for nursing staff and that has been one of our major concerns and we've been trying our best to address that."

BHB is also hopeful that two new co-operative programmes with overseas universities - Virginia's Hampton University and McGill University in Montreal, Canada - to offer nurses courses at the Bermuda College will pay dividends in terms of producing Bermudian nurses in the future.

At the moment, Mr. Saunders estimated that over 50 percent of local nursing staff are expatriates.

The four-year Bachelor of Nursing programmes will be on offer as of this September.

"In a few years, hopefully we could become self-sufficient," he said, of Bermudianising the profession.

While the Island continues to face stiff competition from around the world to recruit and keep nurses, Mr. Saunders said these shortages tend to be cyclical, reaching crisis points every decade or so.

Bermuda has more male nurses now than it has ever had in the past, he added, and he feels the profession is still attractive to many but there are also more specialisations available to those who choose a career which changing the applicant pool.

Assignment America recruiters were contacted for comment yesterday however phone calls from The Royal Gazette were not returned.