摘要：In the years since World War II, the United States has grown increasingly dependent on foreign-bornhealthcare personnel at all levels of the healthcare system. Currently, 1.46 million immigrants account for15% of all healthcare providers in the United States. (Clearfield & Batalova, 2007). Current estimatesindicate that 17% of the total U.S. nursing workforce are foreign-born, a dramatic increase from 1998when they were approximately 4.5% of the total (Brush, Sochalski, & Berger, 2004; Spry, 2009).Recruiting foreign-born nurses has been recommended as a solution to the U.S. shortage of nurses (Xu,2003; Gamble, 2002; Neal, 2002) and as a means of diversifying the nursing work force to meet the needsof an increasingly multicultural patient population (Abriam-Yago, Yoder, & Kataoka-Yahiro, 1999). TheAmerican Nurses Association (ANA), however, questions the ethics of recruiting nurses for immigrationto the United States. The ANA objects to the resulting “brain drains” in less wealthy nations as well as thefailure to remedy the root causes of the nursing shortage in the United States (Trossman, 2002; Buchan &Aiken, 2008). Nevertheless, shortages in the U.S. health-care labor force are not expected to disappearanytime soon (McMahon, 2004; Buerhaus, Auerbach, & Staiger, 2009; Ellenbecker, 2010) and relianceon immigrant professionals is likely to continue.
关键词：Web-Based Instruction; Second Language Acquisition; Speaking;Pronunciation; Online Teaching & Learning; Culture; Language For Special;Purposes
