Nurses arriving from Thailand; Philippines nurses still being cleared

Pago Pago, AMERICAN SAMOA — LBJ is getting a new supply of nurses from Thailand this week with three arriving on Monday, Aug. 21, three more to arrive on Aug. 28, and another three to arrive on September 1.

LBJ Chief Executive Officer, Dr Akapusi Ledua says they are carrying out interviews for the 16 Nurses who are already here, besides those who arrived in a group of three on Monday this week, to be followed by more.

“We’re starting to interview the other 16 who are waiting to be interviewed this week.” A total of 32 are all from Thailand, he said.

There are also nurses from the Philippines that are still waiting to be cleared through Immigration.

“Once we clear that out from Los Angeles and the Philippines, then we are going to recruit once again from the Philippines.”

LBJ’s administration has received applications from many nurses from overseas.

Dr. Ledua says they have a list of nurses who have already indicated their interest and they are going to contact them. There are about 20 nurses with files already in LBJ’s possession.

“Once we contact those people who have already completed the process, they already have their files with us, it’s just a matter of them signing the contract and working with Immigration to bring them over.

“I will say by the end of October, we should have more nurses here, and by the end of this year, we should have 50 nurses that we targeted earlier on to help our nurses here.”

Furthermore he says that is the solution right now, while the long term solution is to improve the recruitment of local nurses.

They are also going to have a retention plan for local nurses who are already here.

“LBJ needs to retain them, and to retain them, we need to improve their working conditions and we need to improve their benefits so they can stay on the island,” he said.

There is a verbal agreement and they’ll probably be signing a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with contracts, with Chaminade University - Hawaii, who are willing to partner with LBJ, for its advanced Nursing program for local students. 

The CEO noted that “they are working with Chaminade on forming that partnership so instead of our local nurses leaving to go to Hawaii, they’ll be bringing in their curriculum and their program locally and we will be doing it virtually …

“Those are plans we have for the recruitment and the retention.”

Dr. Ledua noted several different nursing programs that will be running —  there is the Certified Nurse Assistant (CNA) program with Chaminade University, the 2-year CNA program at the American Samoa Community College, as LBJ will also have a CNA program for two months.

“We’ll have the CNA, Licensed Practical Nurse LPN and the Bachelor for Nursing Program, BFN.”

LBJ is also “looking at increasing it to a Masters level also as far as our partnership with Chaminade is concerned and we are planning for the hospital to cover the cost of those training, so we can train our own nurses and keep them here.”

Right now, Dr Ledua said, “unfortunately we have to bring them (nurses) from outside, but the long term plan with our theme at the hospital is to grow our own and keep our own.

 “So we grow our own local staff and keep them,” he said, adding that includes training of the trainers through seminars and workshops.