By Alex Ritson BBC World Service business reporter

Fancy a job where you can work almost anywhere in the world?

A job where your clients could range from Presidents to shopkeepers.

A job where the starting salary can be as much as $60,000 a year with other benefits, like an apartment thrown in.

Forget investment banking - and consider becoming a nurse.

In demand

Staffing crises are a familiar scenario on hospital wards all over the world.

"The more health care supply you put in, the more the demand grows" Justin Jewitt, Nestor Healthcare Group

Justin Jewitt is chief executive of Nestor Healthcare Group, one of a growing number of agencies flying tens of thousand of nurses across continents and oceans to satisfy what seems to be an insatiable demand.

"We could actually place every single... individual involved in healthcare, probably two or three times over," he said.

"The reality is we need more people in training now to become qualified nurses across the whole world to meet the population ageing bomb that's really about to hit us in about ten to fifteen years."

Attractions

For the agencies, it can be a lucrative business, with rates of commission running at anything from 9% to 22% of a nurse's annual salary.

But that's paid by the hospital. And for a nurse from the developing world, working in a city like London can be a tempting prospect.

"I've got two kids. I want to give my kids English education...until my kids are grown up I will be here, then I'll go back to my dreamland India," one nurse working in London said.

Another moved to London because of the wages. "When you compare the salary it's eighty times higher than our country," she said.

Valuable skills

The Philippines is one developing country which educates many more nurses than it has vacancies for, with qualifications of a very high standard.

"The internet is almost on everybody's doorstep these days and King's has its own website and we also recruit nurses through that website" Fiona Hunter, King's College hospital

Many Filipino nurses who are working abroad regularly send money to their families back home, oiling the wheels of the local economy.

Fiona Hunter, head of nursing recruitment at London's King's College hospital, said nurses from all over the world have been able to integrate very well into the nursing culture at King's.

"A patient with renal failure in Australia is the same as a patient with renal failure here and the nursing care of that patient will be the same, the nursing skills are very transferable, and of great value to us," she said.

Paying the price

But even if overseas nurses are widely accepted, the rates of commission charged by the agencies which find them can be controversial, especially in places like the UK where healthcare is publicly funded.

Justin Jewitt insists that it shouldn't be a problem, as long as agency fees are reasonable.

"I think when you look at the cost of recruitment in the UK which can be anything up to £12,000 per nurse, the actual provision of an overseas nurse - even with our rates which are broadly in the middle of any charges - would be lower than £8,000 per nurse, so therefore it's more cost effective."

And with the unstoppable march of technology, agencies will come under increasing pressure to show they are providing value for money.

Globetrotting

Fiona Hunter said there is also a growing source of competition for the agencies which doesn't involve paying a fee.

"The internet is almost on everybody's doorstep these days and King's [College London] has its own website and we also recruit nurses through that website," she said.

"People can paste their CVs across and then we can select them, chose to interview them and hopefully mobilise them across to nurse in King's."

But whether globetrotting nurses use agencies to help them travel the world or not, one thing is for certain, a qualification in nursing will get you a work permit almost anywhere for many years to come.