House panel cites top 21 nursing schools

MANILA, Philippines - The House committee on higher and technical education of the House of Representatives has cited the top 21 nursing schools based on the performance of their graduates in the last two nurse licensure tests given by the Professional Regulation Commission (PRC).

Pasig City Rep. Roman Romulo, committee chairman, identified the top 5 schools with their passing rates in the exams as West Visayas State University-La Paz (100 percent), Cebu Normal College (100 percent), University of the Philippines-Manila (100 percent), Chinese General Hospital Colleges (99.30 percent), and Saint Paul University-Tuguegarao (99.28 percent).

Following them are Benguet State University-La Trinidad (99.15 percent), University of Santo Tomas (99.04 percent), Trinity University of Asia (98.95 percent), Saint Paul University-Dumaguete (98.36 percent), Xavier University-Cagayan de Oro (98.15 percent), Velez College-Cebu (98.01 percent), Cebu City Medical Center (97.06 percent), Saint Paul University-Manila (96.23 percent), and Pamantasan ng Lungsod ng Maynila (95.45 percent).

Completing the list are Saint Paul University-Iloilo (94.74 percent), University of Saint Louis-Tuguegarao (94.52 percent), Remedios T. Romualdez Medical Foundation (94.51 percent), Saint Louis University-Baguio (93.33 percent), San Pedro College-Davao (89.41 percent), Southern Luzon State University-Lucban (88.61 percent), and Saint Mary’s University-Bayombong (88.15 percent).

Romulo said the 21 schools were the only ones “with 50 or more examinees and with at least 80 percent of their examinees passing” the nurse licensure tests.

“We are making this list public to enable prospective nursing students and their parents to make a sound choice as to where they will most likely get the best value for their hard earned tuition money,” he said.

“We must point out that there may be other smaller nursing schools with at least 80 percent of their examinees passing the last two nurse eligibility tests, but these institutions were excluded from the list simply because they had fewer than 50 examinees,” he said.

According to the PRC, some 38.09 percent, or 33,127 out of 86,953 examinees, passed the nurse licensure tests in June 2013 and December 2012.

Nursing is among the top five most heavily subscribed programs in college, along with teaching, criminology, accounting and civil engineering, wherein graduates must first pass a national licensure examination before they can properly practice their profession.

The government has been trying to padlock nursing schools with poor performance in licensure examinations.