Nursing exam retake all for show abroad

It’s only right to have last June’s 13,000 nursing licensure examinees retake Tests III and V that were tainted with leaked questionnaires. But not for the reason cited by nursing student unions. Egged on by job recruiters, the students wail that condoning cheating will deter the US Nursing Council Licensure Examination (NCLEX), the official competence measuring agency, from setting up licensing exams right in Manila. That in turn would mean higher costs to take the exams elsewhere in Asia-Pacific, and thus less chances of landing jobs in America.

That line of reasoning seems all for show. It’s like saying, look, those stern foreigners are watching, so let’s be in our best behavior. Put another way, if there was no invitation from RP for NCLEX to come to Manila, we can live with the nursing exam scam. After all, there had been similar questionnaire leaks before – at least three in the past 25 years of Bar exams, for instance, involving no less than Supreme Court justices and their kin – yet those were no skin off our nose. Unlike with nurses, the US doesn’t recruit Filipino lawyers anyway.

Still, redoing the nursing board exam of 2006 is a must. As Dante Ang of the Commission on Overseas Filipinos says, "Nothing short of the invalidation and retaking of the two leaked subjects can repair the damage done to the reputation and integrity of the nursing exam." In short, the situation needs to be reversed for the right reason. Honorable standing for any professional licensing exam is not only for overseas job placement. Nor is it for local stature. More basic, either you are a true professional, or one who acquired the honorific title of Dr. or Arch. or CPA by chicanery.

Examinees who passed fair and square naturally will feel aggrieved about a retake. In fact, the topnotcher has said "no way am I letting them steal the position from me by annuling the exam results." Others who never partook of the leakage can be as livid. But they have no one to blame for the mess than their own industry leaders. No less than two members of the Board of Nursing (BON), which prepares the questionnaires, leaked Tests III and V. They crassly handed what should be top-secret papers to the president of the Phil. Nurses Association, most likely out of gratitude for being feted to a Switzerland tour. And that PNA chief, who owns a nursing school and an exam review center, passed on the leaks to a dozen deans. He had the audacity to claim that if there truly was a leak, as half a dozen examinees have sworn, how come his own son failed the exams. Fortunately for that young man, no one raised the matter of scholastic aptitude, for the sins of the father must not visit upon the son.

At any rate, the collusion of nursing leaders makes the cheating look widespread, and not limited only to Baguio City as earlier reported. Too, the Professional Regulatory Commission (PRC) worsened things by refusing to acknowledge the sworn statements about cheating. The BON also hesitated to investigate. And when it no longer could stall, it tried to sweep the problem under the rug by voiding the results of Tests III and V, and recomputing the examinees’ grades. After which, the PRC ordered a hasty professional oathtaking of passers in the Visayas and Mindanao – obviously to pre-empt an impending court order to stop such rites.

The damage is done. No matter what the clean exam passers say now, they will always be lumped together with the cheaters. No hospital or employer would hire any of the 2006 examinees until they retake Tests III and V to everyone’s satisfaction.

Let this be a painful lesson to all professional board examiners as well. Never shit in your own backyard.

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Incidentally, 47,683 Filipino passers of the NCLEX have been sucked into American hospitals and clinics in the past ten years. Citing figures from the US National Council of State Boards of Nursing, ex-senator and labor leader Ernesto Herrera says half of the Filipino registered nurses, or 23,608, passed the NCLEX on the first take and immediately were recruited to US jobs. The rest either retook it or worked their way into America as vocational or licensed practical nurses.

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Reader Winston Obidos interjects: "While you’re at it questioning the Coast Guard’s attentiveness to duty (Gotcha, 25 Aug. 2006), I might as well tell them through your column about carelessness of their personnel. In front of passengers and Coast Guard officers at Boracay, boatmen were smoking while pumping fuel into the engine. When told about the danger, they said cigarettes can’t light up diesel, but apparently don’t know about the fumes. One of these days their ignorance will lead to tragedy.

"Also one time on a boat from Caticlan to Boracay, the engine sputtered. Only when we reached Station 2 did they find out that the bottom was filled with water and we could have sunk. Not only seaworthiness of vessels but also competence of tourism boatmen should be assured."

Yep, that’s what the Coast Guard and Maritime Industry Authority should be doing – but aren’t. They display only carelessness, not just in Bora but in all other resorts as well. Unfortunately, the authorities can be as ignorant as the persons they’re governing. It’s like traffic aides with no knowledge of driving telling equally untaught drivers about road courtesy.

Officials’ negligence costs lives. It’s now turning out that the oil-spilling motorized tanker M/T Solar-1 had no permit from the Coast Guard to sail on the fateful day it spewed 200,000 liters of bunker fuel in Guimaras Strait. And its captain had no license from the Maritime Authority.

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Talk about the right hand not knowing what the left is doing. Two of the five businessmen that authorities are investigating for bankrolling the failed coup d’état of Feb. 24 are about to receive P1.5 billion in loans from two government banks.

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