Lacking certification, not skill

It’s been four years since Dr. Esperanza Gomez had to stop practicing medicine, because she immigrated to Rhode Island from her native Colombia.
Her problem: She hasn’t yet taken the medical exams to obtain her license in the United States – the study materials are too expensive for her. And she needs to improve her English skills.
So Gomez, who was a general-practice doctor for 17 years in Colombia, spends her days as a part-time health educator at the social service agency Progreso Latino and as a Latino medical liaison at Home & Hospice Care of Rhode Island.
She’s hopeful she’ll return to seeing patients some day – this time, in Rhode Island.
“That’s my dream,” she said last week.
With a health care industry suffering from a shortage of qualified professionals, a group of local community agencies is looking to assist people such as Gomez who make up a ready-made work force of immigrants who were qualified nurses, therapists and physicians in their home countries but haven’t been able to break into those fields since moving.
Led by Dorcas Place Adult & Family Learning Center Inc. in Providence, the agencies will launch a new service next week aimed at helping those health care professionals who hold credentials from outside the United States to get certified and licensed in Rhode Island.
The Rhode Island Welcome Back Center, located at Dorcas Place’s Providence location on Elmwood Avenue, will likely not lack people to assist.
Officials have already identified dozens of people who need support in getting U.S. credentials – people with expertise who are instead working in lower-skilled positions such as factory jobs.
“We hear about them all the time, be it former nurses, physicians, dentists,” said Brenda Dann-Messier, president and CEO of Dorcas Place. “We’re going to be inundated.”
The center will provide services ranging from English classes to support groups to career counseling. Center director Manuela Raposo said the center can also help people retrieve their transcripts from schools in other countries.
Center officials plan on registering between 60 and 90 people in the first year.
Health care and social assistance is one of Rhode Island’s fastest-growing sectors but also has a vast amount of positions left vacant by staffing shortages, according to figures from R.I. Department of Labor and Training.
Between 2002 and 2007, that sector added more than 9,600 jobs, and DLT projects the number of positions will increase by another 14,500 by 2014.
Meanwhile, companies are struggling to fill what’s out there now because of the increased demand and the insufficient pool of qualified workers. There were 3,400 positions left vacant last summer.
The problem is so bad, Lifespan, which operates four hospitals in Rhode Island, has been forced to use expensive traveling nurses – contract laborers from other parts of the country that fill some labor needs three months at a time.
At a forum last week announcing the creation of the Welcome Back Center, John O’Hare, DLT’s acting assistant director, said the center makes sense.
Immigrant health care workers “are the low-hanging fruit in a system that needs professionals,” he said.
It’s not a new idea. In fact, the Rhode Island Welcome Back Center is modeled after a center in San Francisco. There are six others across the country, including one in Boston.
The office of adult education at the R.I. Department of Education was impressed enough to request proposals and to offer a $19,000 planning grant. That was awarded to a coalition of several agencies, including Dorcas Place.
The center has since received financial support from the Rhode Island Foundation, the United Way of Rhode Island, and the Jessie B. Cox Charitable Trust, as well as Making Connections Providence and the Casey Foundation, Mann-Messier said.
The state’s two largest health care systems, Lifespan and Care New England, have also backed the soon-to-be-opened new center.
Mann-Messier figures the Welcome Back Center would need $350,000 to $400,000 annually to remain open.
The benefits of using immigrant professionals go beyond just filling jobs, according to advocates.
Health care workers from other countries offer diversity and a deep understanding of different cultures, they said, particularly important as Rhode Island’s minority population expands. “The impact is incredible” on minority patients, Raposo said.
Employee retention is also a key factor. According to Dann-Messier, only a small percentage of nurses recruited from other parts of the country or internationally actually remain in Rhode Island over the long term.
That’s not the case with those who will be helped at the Welcome Back Center, according to Raposo. “These are individuals who didn’t have to be recruited from another country; they are already living in the community,” she said. “When you try to help someone already in our community, they already have roots.”
Esperanza Gomez, the Colombian doctor, isn’t going anywhere.
She enjoys Rhode Island and is scheduled to take her licensing exams. In the meantime, she plans to visit the Welcome Back Center for support.
The study materials can cost more than $4,000, and she’s hoping the center can provide some guidance.
“I need to study a lot before I take the first test,” Gomez said with a thick accent. “It’s difficult because I am studying in a different language.” •