PRC rushes to complete nursing board examiners

The nursing licensure examination scheduled for December may not push through if the Professional Regulation Commission (PRC) fails to come up with a pool of examiners who will prepare the test questionnaires soon.

PRC Commissioner Avelina De la Rea said they are planning to tap former examiners of the Board of Nursing (BON) and leaders in the academe to prepare the questions for the December examination.

Around 60,000 nursing graduates are expected to take the test.

"We are doing our best so that the December examination will push through. As much as possible, we don’t want a postponement," De la Rea told The STAR.

This problem is an offshoot of the leakage controversy hounding the June licensure examination. Two BON members — Anesia Dionisio and Virginia Madeja — were implicated in the anomaly.

The controversy prompted four other BON members — chairwoman Eufemia Octaviano and members Remedios Fernandez, Letty Kuan and Estelita Galutira — to resign in July.

De la Rea noted that while these resignations were not accepted by Malacañang because there were no available replacements for Octaviano, Fernandez, Kuan and Galutira, the four are no longer keen on making the questionnaires.

Under the present setup, test questionnaires are prepared by BON examiners who are nominated by the Philippine Nurses Association (PNA).

This arrangement came under fire after former PNA president George Cordero was also linked to the leakage.

The PNA has not nominated anyone to replace the BON members, prompting the PRC to come up with its own list, which it submitted to the PNA for verification.

De la Rea said the PRC nominated over 30 people, but only one of the nominees responded with a rejection.

She added that the PRC is now looking for former BON members and academicians who can serve as examiners and formulate the questionnaires in time for the December test.

"(The PRC) would like to enlist the help of old BON members and academicians. They can come up with a data bank of questions that will be used in the examination," she said.

But De la Rea said the resigned BON members will still have to "stay on" so they can screen the questionnaires.

The PRC is mulling the possibility of having the BON members and back-up examiners sit together and select the questions that will be used in the test.

However, De la Rea assured that, when they do this, security measures will be put in place to prevent any leakage.

She added that they hope to come up with the pool soon, since it usually takes an examiner three months to formulate questions.

The licensure examination is divided into five tests, each of which has 100 questions. The questions used in the test are taken from at least 500 questions prepared by an examiner.

"We are hopeful that the December test will push through, assuming that the BON and the academicians will cooperate fully with us," she said. — Sheila Crisostomo