Still more rackets at PRC main office

Passers of the nursing board exam of June 2006, unfortunately tainted by questionnaire leakage, have formed an Alliance of New Nurses. Its head Renato Aquino reacts to my pieces (Gotcha, 28 and 30 Aug. 2006). He shows a peculiar type of reasoning:

"All 17,821 of us are being held hostage by a certain institution and nursing leaders who cannot accept that a boy from the Univ. of Pangasinan topped the exam while two of their cum laude honorees failed. Look at the petitioners (to annul the exam results). Only one is a nurse; the two others aren’t: one failed the June exam; the other is a teacher from Rizal (province). Thus, you have to question whether they’re for the integrity of the nursing profession or only for school pride. Not with them are their passers, 110 of who rushed to the Professional Regulatory Commission (PRC) on Friday morning, Aug. 25, to take their oath as nurses.

"On the NCLEX (US Nursing Competency Licensure Exam), note that (RP) had been rejected thrice before (as exam site) prior to this controversy. NCLEX officials cited red tape and security risk. (Commission on Overseas Filipinos chairman) Dante Ang should not use the recent nursing board exam as scapegoat for failing to bring the NCLEX (to Manila) as he was tasked to do.

"For us all to retake the exam would be a precedent. If a school does not get its desired passing percentage, (then) it will cry leakage for a retake. What’s the use of the PRC then?

"The PNA, ANSAP and NLPGN already said they will accept the 17,821 of us without prejudice, and they will stand by the release by the PRC and Board of Nursing (BON) of the results through Resolution 31. There were some resignations, and these are the nursing leaders who cannot accept that their constituents are speaking out.

"We formed an alliance to protect our well deserved licenses. We are victims here."

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What were leaked to select nursing schools and review centers were Tests 3 and 5 on psychiatric and surgical nursing. Two BON members who drafted the questions somehow admitted to the leak. Anesia Dionisio said she lost her papers because of poor health; Virginia Madeja admitted she had them photocopied.

Aquino does not denounce the leakers, In a statement of his alliance to congressmen, he called the PRC-BON Resolution 31 solomonic: "The BON did not totally invalidate the leaked questions, and instead used a statistical treatment to tone down the upward pull of the leakage on the grades of those who benefited from it. Baguio City (where the leak first spread) registred only 33 percent, compared to the national average of 42 percent. PCHS (Phil. College of Health Sciences), owned by resigned Phil. Nurses Association head George Cordero, registered 35 percent."

Chairman Dante Ang nonetheless says the re-computation not only brought down the passing average, but also broke the law on licensure exams. "The law says that your passing average should be 75 percent, and that you don’t get a grade below 60 in any subject," he explains. "When the BON revised the grade of Test 3 questions from 1 percent to 1.25 percent, the equivalent was to get the 60 percent minimum passing average."

In effect, examinees had to get only 48 of 100 questions right. So Ang concludes: "By assigning 1.25 percent to every question left in Test 3, the passing average was reduced from 60 to 48 questions. This is not acceptable if you follow the original intention and spirit of the law ... therefore putting in doubt the competence of the examinees."

It’s worse with Test 5, in which the solomonic BON nullified 90 of the 100 questions, then incorporated the scores of the examinees in the remaining 10 questions to the final score. Since the final score is the average of Tests 1-4, the additional points from Test 5 in effect became a bonus round. Result: the number of passers went up from 17,322 to 17,821, or from 41.24 to 42.42 percent.

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Back at the PRC, a former employee says my exposés on fund rackets are only the proverbial tip of the iceberg. Unexplained cash takes come not only from the P600 charged for the oath taking of each exam passer and P400 per guest, or from the overprice of two P15-documentary stamps by P6 apiece from each of the million or so examinee.

Overcharging begins upon applying to take an exam. Rules require applicants to submit two "window letter envelopes with metered stamps," for mailing of PRC notices on the exam venue and result. One outlet at the PRC main office exclusively sells these minor items: the PRC Cooperative Store. The rules do not explicitly require purchases from the Coop, but it is implicit since envelopes already are printed with the PRC address and logo. A stamped envelope retails for P12, and those in the know aver it costs only P6. The situation is replicated in regional offices. But does the Coop pay rent for the store space in PRC offices?

There are many other exclusive "dealers" at the PRC main compound: • the photocopier, at P1 per page but which can be done better for 60¢ elsewhere, of papers that should be issued in duplicate or triplicate in the first place;

• the portrait photograph and name-tagging studio; and

• notary fee of P40 per applicant charged by members of the legal staff on official time.

The BIR must know that no receipts are issued for these services. But somebody’s making oodles of money, tax-free.

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