90,000 to take nurse exam

About 90,000 nursing graduates are set to take the licensure examination today.

Marco Sto. Tomas, Professional Regulation Commission (PRC) Board of Nursing (BON) member, said 89,252 graduates have applied to take the two-day Nursing Licensure Examination (NLE).

Sto. Tomas said the PRC has set up additional examination centers to accommodate the record number of NLE examinees.

He said Manila registered the biggest number of examinees with 40,344 and was followed by Baguio with 13,460. Davao and Cebu posted 8,113 and 8,036 examinees, respectively.

At least 2,000 to 5,000 nursing graduates from Cagayan de Oro, Iloilo, Legaspi, Lucena, Tuguegarao and Zamboanga will also be taking the examination starting today.

“Even Jolo, Sulu has 139 examinees for this scheduled examination,” Sto. Tomas added.

PRC has set an examination earlier but due to the huge number of examinees, Sto. Tomas said results will likely come out a little late or probably in February.

“It depends on how fast the machines will help us in checking, but with this volume of examinees, we might have the results next year already, in January or February,” he said.

The BON has given assurance that appropriate measures were undertaken by the PRC to ensure that the scheduled NLE on Nov. 29 and 30 will be tamper and leak-proof.

The licensure examination is composed of five tests and each test has 100 questions.