By 2012, U.S. will require 1 million replacement nurses. To fill the vacancies, U.S., hospitals must not only depend on U.S.-trained nurses but also on foreign-educated nurses. Norwalk Hospital is part of this national trend when it has hired nearly 60 foreign-educated nurses during the last four years, in the first place from India.

International recruitment brings a significant number of nurses but it can use up two years, for the greatest part because of the immigration process which can spend eight months to fully accomplish in some instances.

A delegation that was composed of officials from the Saskatchewan's government 5 health regions the Saskatchewan registered Nurses Association and the Saskatchewan Union of Nurses took flight to the Philippines Last February as a stop relieve the Nursing Shortage of the Province of Saskatchewan by attempting to gain approval of nurses with competitive wages and a compensation package as a results government has recruited approximately 300 new Nurses from the Philippines . Some of the new hired Nurses were originally heading to United States but U.S. really closed a great extent of their borders to a large number of these new hired nurses due to the present political environment with the approaching election, resulting to change in heading to Canada . With as much as $5,000 offered by the province of Saskatchewan for relocation and travel expenses of nurses, approximately 300 new nurses were recruited from the Philippines.

The nurse-to-patient ratio in the province of Ontario is 1 nurse for every 144 patients with its nurse registration of 85,000 for 12.3 million population, and the condition where the number of retiring nurses is greater than the number of new hired nurses is preparing the smooth easy way for a nursing shortage in Ontario.

The nursing shortage is also true in every part of Canada. In 2011, Canada will need 331,000 nurses, but a national shortage of 78,000 within the next 3 years is still expected by the Canadian Nurses Association. The increase in enrollment in nursing schools is still not enough to fill the shortage. The high reduction rate in personnel is partially because of the retirement and also partially due to recruitment that is fewer than retirement. Consequently, the present average age of nurses in Canada is 46.

Marie J. Cowan was born on July 20, 1938 in Albuquerque, New Mexico. She was given a nursing diploma by Mary's Help of College of Nursing in San Francisco in 1961. She went on her studies at the University of Washington in Seattle and in 1979, she owned a bachelor's degree in nursing, a master's in physiology and biophysics and a doctorate in an interdisciplinary program composed of pathology and physiology/biophysics. In the same year, she began to serve on the faculty of the University of Washington.

In 1997, Cowan was appointed dean of the UCLA School of Nursing. She thrust forward for restoration of the entry-level undergraduate program that would make greater the readily available supply of nurses in California, and it was reopened in 2006.