Justification for the  project

Though impacts on the quality and accessibility of health-care services lie outside the focus of the research, ample literature supports an underlying assumption of the project: that nurses’ well-being is inextricably linked to that of their patients. In addition, the fact that the nursing workforce is overwhelmingly female makes their labour conditions a matter of gender justice, and therefore an important focus of inquiry in its own right.

In several developing countries, nurses are  increasingly being recognized for the crucial contribution they are making in achieving the U.N. Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), especially the goals of reducing maternal mortality, infant and child mortality, and the transmission rates of HIV-AIDS, malaria and tuberculoisis. Given that one of the eight MDGs is to increase gender equality through the economic and political empowerment of women, the nurses’ remuneration and work-related health status should be of interest to policy makers in El Salvador, Nicaragua, and elsewhere.

The research also has implications for understanding nurses’ international migration, a phenomenon designated by the Health Human Resources Observatory of the Pan  American Health Organization (PAHO) as one of the five most critical areas of study and action. Within the sub-region of Central America and the Dominican Republic, El Salvador has one of the highest proportions of nurses’ and doctors’ out-migration.[1] The findings of this project shed light on the domestic factors that compel both Salvadorean and Nicaraguan nurses to seek work abroad.

[1] Ministerio de Salud. 2013. Informe de Labores 2012-2013. San Salvador: Ministerio de Salud:  98