MANILA, Philippines — Flourishing in Australia, the executive director of the Filipino Nursing Diaspora Network said the online group wants to help other Filipino nurses back home by providing opportunities in research as well as giving them mentorship.
FIND Network bills itself as the “only Filipino nursing network at the international level.” While there are groups for Pinoy nurses in host countries, FIND Network aims to fully organize Filipino nurses from across the world.
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One of their main programs this year is the Visiting Professor Project, which is meant to augment the research gaps in nursing schools in the Philippines.
“The aim of this project is to attract prominent Filipino nursing experts from different countries who will serve as visiting faculty,” Jerome Babate, executive director of FIND Network, told Philstar.com in an interview in Sydney earlier this year.
“They will provide research mentoring and research training and then they will write together publications. We strive to have at least five publications in one year, so those are some of our deliverables for this project," he added.
'Caring for Goodness'
Babate said that the project will focus on ten nursing schools in the Western Visayas—he used to work and teach in the region—this year. Should the project become successful, it will be expanded to other areas around the country.
He noted that while there is enough healthcare-related research in the Philippines, patients here and abroad could benefit more if there is more nursing research produced.
The project is part of a larger program called “Caring for Goodness” which encourages Filipino nurses in the diaspora to help back home and assist in capacity-building initiatives for the nursing workforce in the Philippines. This includes aiding them through research, education and training.
The program is funded by US-based Shearwater Health, Inc. Aside from the Visiting Professor Project, the program also has an Emerging Clinical Nursing Education Series to help at least 150 hospital nurses gain insight and expanded experience in clinical education theory.
“One of the network’s primordial concerns is really to help the country and pay back with our resources—our individual nurses, our experts, and our members—to help with capacity-building back in the Philippines in a practical way without even government support,” Babate said.
Some Filipino nurses prefer overseas employment due to a large gap in pay for nurses and other healthcare workers in other countries.
In a parallel development, the Philippine government is trying to address the exodus of healthcare workers. Local Filipino nurses’ groups said one way to do this is through standardized pay for those working in public and private hospitals.
Mapping out Pinoy nurses Down Under
While there is already a clear picture of how many Filipino nurses are working in other countries such as the United States and the United Kingdom, FIND Network said they still have yet to see how many Filipino nurses there are in the Land Down Under.
“Right now, what we’re doing is we’re also trying to map out all the hospitals here in Australia [and] age-care facilities who have Filipinos and see how they are faring in their careers—if they have already found themselves in a leadership role,” Babate said.
Having Filipino nurses in leadership roles is important, Babate said, as it helps in shaping policies and promoting Filipino nurses in general.
This would especially be helpful in countries such as Germany, Canada and the US that have expressed interest in hiring Filipino healthcare workers.
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