the interviews of newly graduated nurses at a Thai nursing school, the graduated nurses want to work in either private or public hospitals in Thailand for 2-3 years. As they become more skilled and competent and more specialty and experienced nurses, they could have more choices to work in international private hospitals in Thailand or abroad with higher pay. Krisnan Lhaonhub (2012)12 mentioned that the movement of health personnel could be a gradually changing phenomenon in Thai health care system in terms of their own interest and attempts, rather than being arranged by working agencies in which would not be able to impact to nursing shortage or nursing adequate of nursing personal of the country. Besides, the personal factors, the most important motivation of the health care personnel mobility was higher pay. This could happen in the situation of moving from public to private hospitals or moving from the country to outside the country.
As the second author of this article is a registered nurse in the Philippines working in a Thai nursing school, she had observed a lot of similarities and some differences in nursing education and nursing profession between the two countries mentioned above that would be a challenge for the nurses of both countries. Being a Filipino nurse, it could be reasonable for the second author of this article to analyze the situation and discuss the possibility for Filipino nurses to work in Thailand below.
Firstly, Philippines is known to be the first and still the number one country in exporting nurses all over the world. Philippines
consider Thailand as a neighboring country though they don t border each other however it is much closer compared to Middle East countries and western countries which are the common destination for Filipino nurses and one of the dilemmas of OFW nurses is the distance between them and their family. Therefore, there is a great possibility that Filipino nurses would choose to work in countries closer to the Philippines and Thailand is one of which.
Secondly, as stated earlier Philippines produce a large number of nurses each year and Philippines cannot employ their own nurses. In addition the main destination of Filipino nurses like U.S. and U.K. are unable to employ a large number of nurses than they used to, Filipino nurses would search for another possible destination and MRA could be an opportunity for the nurses who had already completed their 3 years experience and still unable to work in U.K., U.S. and even in Middles East countries.
Filipino nurses may also wish to work in Thailand to save placement cost. Some nurses who have more than 3 years experience and passed several English examinations still cannot leave the Philippines due to expensive placement fees of the agencies. In order to work in western countries nurses need approximately 800,000 peso (630,000 baht) to cover all expenses including airfare, food, rent and school fees for the bridging program that one must un- dergo before engaging in full-time practice as a registered nurse and not everyone can afford it.11In the event that Thailand would open opportunity for Filipino nurses, those financially