When we support nurses, we strengthen entire communities and economies. Every year on May 12th, International Nurses Day is celebrated around the world to underscore the critical role a healthy nursing workforce plays in strengthening economies, improving health systems, and ensuring better outcomes for communities worldwide. The 2025 theme, “Our Nurses. Our Future. Caring for Nurses Strengthens Economies,” focuses on the health and wellbeing of nurses and challenges us to reimagine what it truly means to care for nurses.
We spoke with Melissa Ojemeni, RN, PhD, North America 2024 Global Fellow; Elizabeth Doggett, RN, MA, North America 2025 Cohort Member; Natalie Meyers, MPH, North America 2022 Global Fellow; and Emma Mitchell, RN, PhD, North America 2024 Global Fellow, on what caring for nurses means to them—not just on May 12th, but through policies, investments, and leadership opportunities.
How does a healthy global health nursing workforce strengthen the economy?
Melissa Ojemeni: Investing in nursing is a powerful catalyst for economic and community development. Because nurses are deeply rooted in the communities they serve, they are uniquely positioned to prevent disease, manage chronic conditions, and reduce mortality—delivering healthier populations that are more productive and better able to contribute to economic growth.
Moreover, strengthening the nursing and broader health workforce yields significant returns through job creation, enhanced social protection, and progress toward gender equity. With nurses comprising nearly 60% of the global health workforce—most of whom are women—strategic investment in this sector not only expands female labor force participation but also accelerates poverty reduction and fosters inclusive economic advancement.
As a nurse leader, how have you personally witnessed or experienced the impact of chronic understaffing and burnout? What policy changes or cultural shifts are needed to address burnout?
Elizabeth Doggett: Having worked in a nurse-midwife led clinic and birth center during the COVID-19 pandemic, I can speak firsthand to just how stretched, under-supported, and burnt-out nurses can be; and how that impacts both the workforce and patient care.
Our clinic was already experiencing chronic burnout due to understaffing and under compensation before the pandemic hit. The nurses and nurse-midwives worked untenable schedules, were almost always called in on their “call” shifts, completed charting and administrative tasks on their days off, and were undercompensated due to inadequate reimbursement of midwifery care from private insurance and public payors. My colleagues frequently discussed experiences of secondary trauma and moral distress, especially from working with patients coming from marginalized groups or difficult social or economic situations, and those who came to us with extreme distrust in the health system from traumatic past experiences. And then the pandemic hit and exacerbated the situation greatly. We had to re-create how we interacted with our patients and their families, how the clinic and birth center were staffed, we couldn’t see each other’s faces anymore since we were wearing masks and goggles to optimize safety. Our workforce just didn’t have much emotional, social, and structural reserve to draw on in a crisis.
Ultimately, burnout was one of the several contributing factors to the closure of the organization, and the loss of a trusted birthing center and clinic for women’s and trans health in our community. Some of the leaders of the organization didn’t fully appreciate just how critical the burnout problem was, while other leaders were acutely aware but just didn’t have adequate tools and resources to improve the situation. In either case, we can’t place full blame on leadership at that level: there is only so much power at the clinical leadership level when resources are determined by external funders, public and private. What is needed to support nurses’ wellbeing is structural and societal change to place greater value on care work and women’s health. Inadequate resources for caregiving and health are linked to patriarchal norms that undervalue the lives and wellbeing of women—as patients and workers. We need more advocacy and norm change at the structural level that advances the principles laid out in ICN’s Caring for Nurses Agenda for Sustainable Workforce Well-being.
Emma Mitchell: As a nurse leader in academia, I’ve seen burnout at multiple levels—at the bedside, in community/public health settings, in advanced practice roles, and in faculty in schools of nursing. Many schools of nursing have noted a huge percentage of their students burning out and leaving nursing in their very first year of practice after graduating. In response to this, our school of nursing implemented a multifaceted campaign and culture shift toward resilience, a similar approach that many other schools of nursing and health systems are also taking. The problem with “resilience,” however, is that while it is important for our students and future nurses to cultivate those skills, it also places the onus of the solution on the individual, when in reality, it is a systems problem. To maintain clinical environments that are safe for our patients and nurses, systems changes are needed to reduce burnout and subsequently understaffing.
What do you see as the most pressing health issues affecting the global nursing workforce today?
Natalie Meyers: Today, there is a shortage of reconstructive surgical practitioners, especially women nurses and women globally, creating a gap in access to reconstructive surgical care, particularly in low- and middle-income countries. This shortage is made worse by gender disparities, notably the lack of and unequal treatment of women nurses and surgeons globally.
To put this into perspective, the U.S. has 1 reconstructive surgeon per 50,000 people, while Sub-Saharan Africa only has 1 reconstructive surgeon per 10 million people. There are only three female surgeons for every 1 million people in low-income countries. For example, women only make up 7% of the surgical workforce in Sub-Saharan Africa, and we’ll never close that gap in access to surgical care if we only rely on the male half of the population to close it.
It’s important to note that this gender gap does not stop with women surgeons but deeply impacts women nurses. Even in high-income countries, many female healthcare workers, especially nurses, are considering leaving their jobs due to harassment, low pay, and low status. Recent studies found that 43% of nurses in the US and 33% of nurses in the UK are considering leaving the profession.
The gender disparity is only made worse globally with a shortage of nurses that already exists in low- and middle-income countries. According to the International Council of Nurses (ICN), approximately 89% of the global nursing shortage is concentrated in LMICs, with significant gaps in regions such as Africa and South-East Asia.
What can institutions do to better support the global nursing workforce?
Melissa Ojemeni: First, nurses deserve professional recognition and fair compensation that fully reflects the value their expertise provides to upholding health care systems. In addition, the authority to practice to the full scope of their education, skills, and experience must be harnessed and utilized to maximize the benefits to patients and communities they serve.
Sustained investments in career development and leadership pathways are critical to attracting and retaining providers. Nurses must be proportionally represented at decision-making tables, with opportunities to grow into roles that influence decisions and shape policy. Providing access to continuing and degree-granting education, ongoing and specialized training, and mentorship programs that support specialization and leadership helps ensure that nurses are prepared to meet the changing demands of health care while reinforcing their critical contributions to health systems improvement.
Workplace environments need to be safe, respectful, inclusive, and dignified. Addressing these issues through clear policies, investments in infrastructure, ongoing training, and systems of accountability fosters psychological safety and professional fulfillment—factors that contribute to improving retention and morale. Staff needs decent accommodation and workplace environments (e.g., appropriate lighting, electricity, breakrooms) to be ready to care for patients.
Lastly, institutions must make staff wellness a strategic priority. When organizations proactively support the holistic health of their workforce—mental, emotional, and physical—burnout and turnover are reduced, and teamwork and performance are strengthened. Initiatives that promote resilience, work-life balance, and mental health are essential to building and sustaining a high-performing clinical workforce.
What changes are needed to improve the health and wellbeing of nurses working in global health?
Elizabeth Doggett: In addition to the structural changes I mentioned above, I think it’s worth mentioning the power of social support that nurses can offer one another if they have the space to do so. At Jhpiego, my colleagues co-created a very simple toolkit with a group of nurses and midwives in Mali and with a human-centered design partner. The toolkit basically provides discussion prompts to help nurses and midwives talk about the mental and emotional dimensions of their profession. It’s in the form of a deck of cards with written conversation starters, and there are basic instructions about how to facilitate a group with personal sharing, deep listening, and sharing of evidence-based self-care tips.
I had the privilege of helping to pre-test the kit and to conduct a qualitative study of the pilot in Mali and Ghana. The participants told us that they loved having a structured opportunity to process their experiences and emotions, to give and receive support to colleagues. They told us that they were also more likely to ask for help or advice from colleagues while at work and were more likely to discuss clinical errors and near-misses with colleagues—and to learn from them. They also felt that learning to recognize and talk about emotional stress gave them tools to provide more respectful care to clients and be more connected with their families.
I don’t want to put forward the notion that the problem of burnout is caused by women workers’ lack of self-care, or that they should be responsible for solving the problem of burnout, when it’s really a structural problem. However, in low-resource settings, a small start is a start; and can make a difference to the lives of nurses and midwives.
Natalie Meyers: Nurses are the backbone of any hospital system. We need to invest in our nurses and address systemic inequities if we want to ensure they stay in their home countries, where their talents are desperately needed. They need fair pay and career advancement opportunities. And when they do receive specialized training, hospital administrations need to recognize this skill so that they can work where their services are most in demand. For example, at ReSurge International, we recently invested in two incredible nurses to get specific burn care training, only to find out that when they returned to their home hospital, they had been rotated off the burn unit.
Medicine is incredibly hierarchical. We need to shift the unequal balance of power present on surgical teams to ensure all roles are empowered to speak up, contribute, and are all being fairly considered and listened to. It will take locally rooted opportunities for professional growth, leadership, and specialization, as well as respect from the specialties and systems around them, to thrive. We can build stronger, more resilient health systems and ensure that those who care for others are cared for themselves.
Emma Mitchell: As a U.S.-based nurse who does global health work in rural and remote areas of Nicaragua, I emphasize capacity building and local solutions to locally identified community-relevant health concerns. Nurses who work through a decolonization lens in global health need support and visibility. Western nursing has a long history, both domestically and internationally, of being rooted in a “white savior” complex, which in some cases remains difficult to shift or change. Many U.S.-based schools of nursing see working in global health as a way to “give back to less fortunate communities,” or, more concerning still, offer their students training in environments they presume are “less regulatory” simply because they are lower resourced. One of many ways that nurses working in global health can help shift misconception is to recognize the contributions of on-site partners by listing authorship and mentorship in grant writing. As part of my WomenLift Health Journey, colleagues and I conducted a scoping review of literature of the last 10 years of technological development and implementation in the WHO’s cervical cancer elimination strategy. Of the 200+ papers we reviewed, only 3 listed nurses as first authors, and very few had nurses from the target country with any level of authorship. Recognizing local partners as authors and contributors is just one example of how nurses working in global health can help design global health partnerships to build capacity and raise visibility within a lens of decolonization.
What is needed to ensure nurses feel safe and respected at work?
Natalie Meyers: According to Susan Smith, a ReSurge Nurse Volunteer who’s been volunteering for ReSurge in low- and middle-income countries for over a decade, “staffing must be the most common challenge for all nurses. Overworking leads to physical and emotional exhaustion and burnout.” I believe nurses need to be fairly compensated, receive genuine support and respect from their teams, and be empowered to fully utilize their interpersonal and technical skills. This means valuing, recognizing, and celebrating their ideas, voices, and contributions as well as strategically allocating nurse resources and talents, to avoid burnout and empower them to show up as their best selves—in and beyond the operating room.
Special thank you to:
Melissa Ojemeni Deputy Chief Nursing Officer, Partners In Health (North America 2024 Global Fellow)
Elizabeth Doggett, Gender & Reproductive Health Expert, (North America 2025 Cohort Member)
Natalie Meyers, Executive Vice President of Programs and Partnerships, ReSurge International (North America 2022 Global Fellow)
Emma Mitchell, Associate Professor and Director of Global Initiatives, University of Virginia (North America 2024 Global Fellow)
