We have a shortage of nurses all around Finland health care units, because the number of Finnish senior population is quite high. Finland needs to recruit 200 000 more nurses by the year 2030 to meet the demand of health care sector (Yle News, 2023).

Nursing is a challenging profession; the nurses play a crucial role at the front line of every health care unit. Due to shortage of human resources in this job they face a big work load and stressful environment. Nurses also challenge with the continuously upgrading technologies and new computer programs in this field. Nurses face complex circumstances; they witness patients’ traumas and manage many responsibilities that are more than just patient care. Therefore, nurses should keep their knowledge up to date, learn online professional platforms to keep up to date knowledge, and need to collaborate and support the work palace culture, share the responsibilities fairly among each other. The fact is that recruiting foreigner nurses and migrating nurses from one country to another can help with the shortage of nurses (Philip et al.2019), but it makes some risks to the health care sector because of language barrier and culture differences and the practices which is different in each country (Covel et al.2018).

Maintaining emotional and mental wellbeing in Finland as a nurse

Finland has had immigrants from many countries with different culture and language and different from long time ago, so Finns are used to see different people and has been respecting all different groups living peacefully together. They are ready to help foreigners to learn Finnish culture and Finnish language and to help them adapt to the new environment. People have moved to Finland from different countries at different time. In Finland there are few groups of linguistic cultural minorities such as Fino/Swedes, Roma, Ingrian Finns. Karelians, Jews, Tatars and some more minority groups who have moved after 19th century such as Iraqis Afghans, Ukrainians (THL, 2025.)

Cultural differences, emotional and psychological stress, regulatory and administrative challenges are some challenges they face in Finland. These factors make it difficult to adapt to the new work society and it will affect their work performance. Stress of adaptation to a new environment can lead to mental health challenges. Feeling homesick and cultural dislocations are common among foreigner nurses.

Mental wellbeing should be a priority for nurses. The wellbeing of nurses is very important for patient’s safety. Nurses face unique challenges that can mentally make them tired and exhausted and lead to burnout, so it is needed to build up resilience and self-care and prevent burnout in professional life.

Are there mutual trust and respect between Finnish nurses and foreigner nurses in the same unit?

A research was done by Tehy in 2023 they checked the number of foreign background employees in health care sector based on the shortage of nurses and workforce adequacy , their readiness to receive foreigner nurses (Tehy, 2023), which explored the number of foreign-background employees in the social and healthcare sector, solutions to the shortage of nurses ,results showed that foreigner nurses felt unequally treated and their knowledge was underestimated at the working units, there was racism and prejudice, also the working shifts were made unfairly (Tehy 2023).

For a foreigner nurse who has moved to Finland to work in health care system it is important to learn the new culture and the rules and discipline of the country and the health care unit so she can practice them at work. However, the professional nursing job is similar everywhere around the world but there are many elements that need to be adapted to the new environment to be considered an integral part of the team (Boateng 2023). Unfortunately, the mutual respect and trust is lacking between foreigner nurses and Finnish nurses. According to a study done by (Kamau et.al 2023) many foreigner nurses have experienced unfair treatment and denied opportunities for developing their career.

A comprehensive co-operation between organizational approach is needed to successfully integrate foreigner nurses into the new host country. By eliminating the racism and discrimination and instead of always addressing the language barrier, helping them with this issue, and creating a more supportive work environment, this can make a better integration and improve patient care and improve totally a better health care system in Finland.

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Author: Zahedeh Khanlari, Master in Global Health

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References:

Boateng D 2023.Integration of non-European trained nurses in Finland. A qualitative exploratory study. Mertropolia University of Applied Sciences.

Kamau, S., Koskenranta, M., Isakov, T.-M., Kuivila, H., Oikarainen, A., Tomietto, M., & Mikkonen, K. (2023). Nurse educators’ views of integrating culturally and linguistically diverse future registered nurses into healthcare settings: A qualitative descriptive study. Journal of Advanced Nursing, 79(9):3412-3425.

Covell C.L., Primeau M.D., St-Pierre I2018. Internationally educated nurses in Canada: perceived benefits of bridging program participation. Int. Nurse. Rev. 2018;65(3):400–407. Doi: 10.1111/inr.12430.

Philip S., Woodward-Kron R., Manias E., Noronha M. 2018. Overseas Qualified Nurses’ (OQNs) perspectives and experiences of interprofessional and nurse-patient communication through a Community of Practice lens. Collegian. 2019;26(1):86–94. Doi: 10.1016/j.colegn.2018.04.002.

Tehy. (12.9.2023). Tehy survey: The Social and health care sector is not sufficiently prepared to welcome nurses with foreign background. https://www.tehy.fi/en/bulletin/tehy-survey-social-and-health-care-sector-not-sufficiently-prepared-welcome-nurses-foreign-background

THL June 26.2025THL 2025.

Culturally diverse Finland. Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare. Available at: https://www.thl.fi. Accessed 18.09.2025.

Yle News. (12.9.2023). Tuesday’s papers: Foreign nurses, back to basics push and Finnish veterans. Retrieved 15.11.2024 from https://yle.fi/a/74-20049646.