After 11 years, 11 medicine graduates still can’t take oath

After 11 long years, 11 graduates of the Fatima College of Medicine who passed the 1993 medical board examination with "unusually high scores" in two difficult subjects still cannot take their oaths as doctors.

The Supreme Court (SC) has upheld the authority of the government not to recognize them as duly licensed physicians.

In a 30-page decision penned by Justice Dante Tinga, the SC Second Division reversed a decision by the Court of Appeals (CA) in 2000 ordering the Professional Regulation Commission (PRC) and the Board of Medicine to administer the physician’s oath to the 11 respondents: Arlene de Guzman, Celerina Navarro, Rafael Tolentino, Bernardita Sy, Gloria Jularbal, Hubert Nazareno, Nancy Chavez, Ernesto Cue, Heminio Fernandez Jr, Maria Victoria Lacsamana and Merly Sta. Ana.

Many other Fatima graduates contested the PRC’s refusal to recognize them as licensed physicians, but most lost interest in pursuing their case.

The CA affirmed the 1994 decision of the Manila Regional Trial Court that favored the Fatima graduates. After they lost their appeal, the PRC and the Board elevated the case to the SC.

In its decision, the SC cited an established rule that the license to practice a "technical" profession like medicine was a privilege granted by the government.

The SC said that the "desire" of an individual to practice a profession must be balanced against the need to safeguard the welfare of the public.

"Thus, persons who desire to engage in the learned professions requiring scientific or technical knowledge may be required to take an examination as a prerequisite to engaging in their chosen careers. This regulation takes particular pertinence in the field of medicine, to protect the public from the potentially deadly effects of incompetence and ignorance among those who would practice medicine," it said.

The SC said the Board of Medicine was justified in filing before the PRC an administrative case against the Fatima examinees to determine their mental and moral fitness to practice medicine.

"Grave doubts" were raised after the Board observed that the grades of 79 medical board examinees from Fatima were exceptionally high in two subjects – Biochemistry and Obstetrics and Gynecology.

Eleven Fatima examinees scored 100 percent in Biochemistry while 11 scored 99 percent. In Ob-Gyne, 10 scored 100 percent while 21 scored 99 percent. The Board also noted that many of the Fatima examinees got marks of 95 percent or better in both subjects and none scored lower than 90 percent.

A comparison with the performance of candidates from other schools revealed that the unusual clustering of high scores was true only of the Fatima examinees.

The Board issued a resolution withholding the registration of all Fatima examinees as physicians and asked an expert in statistics, Fr. Bienvenido Nebres, to analyze the results of the examination.

The PRC also brought in the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) to find out if any irregularity marred the conduct of the tests.

In his report, Nebres said that the scores of the Fatima examinees in the Biochemistry and Ob-Gyne tests were not only incredibly high but "unusually clustered close to each other."

He concluded that the Fatima scores lacked "the normal variations that one should expect from the examinees in terms of talent effort, energy."

The NBI was more damning in its conclusion that the Fatima examinees may have "gained early access to the test questions."

With these findings, the Board filed charges against the examinees and recommended the nullification of their test results.

In its petition, the PRC argued that the respondents could not compel it to administer their oaths since such an act was not ministerial but discretionary on its part.

But the respondents contended that the issuance of the certificate of registration can be denied only to candidates who had been convicted of a criminal offense involving moral turpitude, found guilty of immoral or dishonorable conduct or declared insane. They said that none of the circumstances were present in their case.

But in siding with the PRC and the Board of Medicine, the SC focused on a provision in Section 8 of Republic Act No. 2382 that requires a person who intends to practice medicine to have "satisfactorily passed the corresponding Board examination."

"The operative word here is ‘satisfactorily,’ defined as ‘sufficient to meet a condition or obligation’ or ‘capable of dispelling doubt or ignorance.’ Gleaned from Board Resolution No. 26, the licensing authority apparently did not find that the respondents ‘satisfactorily passed’ the licensure examinations," it said.