How Immigrant Medical Professionals Are Helping To Fight The Coronavirus
A growing number of health care workers in the U.S. are immigrants. Some states are issuing emergency orders authorizing licensing waivers for internationally trained health care providers.
The battle against the coronavirus has been strained by shortages of ventilators, gloves and N95 masks, but hospitals are also scrambling to keep enough medical staff in place to deal with the surges of patients. Experts say immigrants are helping to fill this need and could play a bigger role if some of the obstacles they face are removed — from long and costly licensing processes to acceptance and even respect.
For the past three years, 33-year-old Jossania Dutra has been working as a nurse assistant at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston. She trained as a registered nurse in her native Brazil and came to the United States five years ago to reunite with
