Group hits commercialization of nursing education

MANILA, Philippines - An organization of nurses blamed yesterday the commercialization of nursing education for the low passing rate in the local nursing licensure examination.

The group Ang Nars lamented that there are now 400,000 nurses that are either unemployed or underemployed in the country.

Ang Nars president Leah Paquiz said the quality of nursing education has suffered with the mushrooming of schools offering nursing courses in the past decades.

“If you put up a nursing school for business or to earn money, you will not be able to give your students a good education. They will suffer in the end,” she said.

Paquiz added that a nursing school that is profit-oriented would not be able to get good teachers, good curriculum, and good training programs for their students.

Based on the results of the licensure tests for nurses given by the Professional Regulation Commission (PRC) in December 2012, only 16,908 passed out of 49,066 examinees. A majority of the examinees turned out to be repeaters.

A few years ago, leaders in the nursing profession expressed alarm over the increase in nursing schools due to the huge demand for Filipino nurses abroad.

The quality of nursing education suffered because of this.

The purpose of many nursing students was not to serve Filipino patients but to migrate to higher paying jobs abroad.

Overseas employment, however, slowed down, particularly in the United States in the past five years because of the already saturated foreign labor market and the competition from other countries deploying nurses.

“There are still countries that hire foreign nurses like Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, but they require a certification that you have working experience of at least four years,” said Paquiz, former president of the Philippine Nurses Association.

Paquiz said that there is an oversupply of Filipino nurses and there are not enough local private and government hospitals or clinics to hire them.