3 million Pinoys took nursing courses in past decade

MANILA, Philippines - Close to three million young Filipinos opted to take up nursing courses while nearly 400,000 passed the licensure examination for the past 10 years, the Professional Regulation Commission (PRC) reported yesterday.

Marco Sto. Tomas, PRC’s Board of Nursing (BON) member, said the number of nursing enrollees from 2000 to 2010 have reached 2,668,046 already.

During that decade, Sto. Tomas said 491,900 nursing graduates were produced, while 365,625 passed the board.

“Compounding these scenarios were the financial crisis in 2008 and the realities of not having expanded or created new nursing plantilla positions in healthcare institutions, which resulted in the unemployment-underemployment situation among 169,922 nurses,” Sto. Tomas disclosed.

Hiring of nurses also suffered as countries abroad imposed at least two years actual employment experience that dropped the number of overseas deployment to 130,703 during the 10-year period.

According to Sto. Tomas, the government came out with various programs to address the surplus of nurses, but there are still a lot of nurses who are left with no choice but to work for free just to gain necessary experience to quality overseas work.

Sto. Tomas added, a group of nurses have set up a cooperative now known as Nurses Vox Healthcare Service Cooperative or Nurses Vox Coop Philippines, to provide an alternative source of income for jobless nurses.

The group launched last Friday a project called H.O.P.E. (Hastening Options for Productivity and Employment) with the aim to generate so-called “entreprenurses” or nurses who can set up their own business.