Abstract

Linguistic and cultural communication skills are essential for nurses as they are at the fore front in public and private hospitals, physicians’ offices, clinics and other outpatient care facilities. Indeed nurses provide the human touch for patients seeking medical advice at a particular medical centre before consulting a physician. Recently, the Ministry of Higher Education has released statistics on unemployment among nurses - about 8000 nursing graduates have not secured jobs. As such, a study was carried out to examine the reason for such a serious situation in Malaysia when other parts of the world are in dire need of nurses. A quantitative methodology was adopted to determine the reason for unemployment among nurses as well as to find ways to relocate these unemployed nurses to parts of the world where their service is needed. This study draws several conclusions about the unemployed nurses and ways to enhance their communication and English language skills to make them more ‘marketable’ as well as be able to execute their duties effectively at workplace. The results indicate a need for a special English language course-design for theses trained nurses.

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