'No more shortage of nurses in US'

MANILA, Philippines - Filipino nurses should not to expect to get jobs in the United States until 2020, an administration lawmaker said yesterday.

LPGMA party-list Rep. Arnel Ty said the shortage of nurses in US ended in 2010 and “now they have ample supply of US-educated nurses.”

Citing statistics from the US National Council of State Boards of Nursing, Ty said the country has produced close to a million nurses from 2006 to 2011.

He said the demand for Filipino and other foreign nurses in the US might start to recover when a generation of American nurses retires eight years from now.

He said US hospitals first encountered a shortage of nurses in 1998. The gap has been filled with the increase in the number of American nurses and “a deluge of foreign-educated practitioners.”

Ty also cited a New England Journal of Medicine report stating that there is “some chance” US hospitals might step up the hiring of foreign nurses when more Americans obtain medical insurance coverage under an expanded US healthcare law starting 2014.

He said that due to the oversupply of nurses in the Philippines, both higher education and professional regulators have been urging high school graduates not to take up nursing.

The lawmaker however criticized regulators for their late response to labor market conditions.

“They (Philippine nursing officials) should be more aggressive in researching and projecting future labor market conditions, both here and abroad, to help guide young Filipinos as to potential career paths,” he said.

“Regulators are just reacting to what is already happening, such as the apparent glut of nursing graduates. Their late advisories would be more valuable once these are predictive and instructive, rather than merely reactive,” he added.

A total of 145,081 Filipino nurses took the US licensure exam or the National Council Licensure Examination from 1995 to 2011. At least 938,552 US nursing graduates also took the NCLEX from 2006 to 2011.

Ty has been pushing for legislation that will provide a special local jobs plan for idle Filipino nurses, now estimated at more than 300,000.

Ty’s House Bill 4582 aims to expand the Nurses Assigned in Rural Service, the short-lived Philippine government project that enlisted nurses to improve healthcare in poverty-stricken towns.