RP nurses the world

It is discomforting that we have already accepted the fact that we have been losing many of our professional and skilled workers to foreign employers who can give them higher-paying jobs abroad. Sadly, most of them are our homegrown teachers, doctors, and nurses, among others. And literally, the flight of our professionals also included Filipino pilots being pirated by foreign airlines.

Although my twin sons are already enrolled in their chosen college courses as freshmen, I’m still trying to sweet talk them to take up aeronautics or any other courses for them to become professional airline pilots. I think I am succeeding with my son who has enrolled in the information communications technology (ICT) course in San Beda College Manila. He told me he has a classmate who is already a licensed commercial pilot.

His twin brother, on the other hand, is not as receptive to my suggestions on his possible career as a pilot. He wants to be a doctor and is taking up psychology at the Manila Doctors College (MaDocs as students fondly call their school for short) located on D. Macapagal Avenue in Pasay City.

Under the college educational plans I bought for them while they were still babies, MaDocs is considered one of the non-exclusive schools and therefore, my son’s tuition is fully covered by the contract. On the other hand, San Beda College where his twin brother is enrolled, is considered one of the exclusive schools in which his education plan contract covers only 33 percent of the total tuition fee payment.

Talking about educational plans, how else can we describe the change of fortunes that befell the so-called Parents Enabling Parents (PEP) coalition, a group of plan holders seeking full refund of their educational placement from Pacific Plans Inc. (PPI)?

Through a loan extended by PPI owner Alfonso Yuchengco, PPI plan holders last year got full tuition support as against those of College Assurance Plan (CAP) who did not receive a single cent despite numbering over 940,000. The Professional Group (TPG) with 130,000 plan holders was also left holding an empty bag.

On top of this, as was widely reported, this group also got a P50-million donation for tuition payment of their children from ex-Congressman-turned philanthropist Mark Jimenez and a cool P10 million as legal funds to battle the Yuchengcos before the courts.

To think that PPI plan holders are the best among other educational plan holders, their number is the least at 34,000. They have in fact received and will continue receiving a total of about P20,000 in tuition support until 2010 as mandated by the court-ordered rehabilitation of this financially-troubled pre-need company.

I’m also told that PEP officers get P2,000 per diem — drawn from donations from members — for doing the talking and taking care of legal matters. The donations continue to this very day despite the MJ donation. How lucky can one get?

Anyway, during the parents’ orientation meeting at the MaDocs, I learned in the video presentation all about their institution which has been into nursing education for the past 30 years. Among other things impressed upon us is the fact the MaDocs students get a "world-class" education and training for nurses. In fact, their maxim is "We nurse the world."

Although the MaDocs campus is just about two years old, the College of Nursing is as old as the Manila Doctors’ Hospital located on U.N. Avenue, Manila where their nursing students conduct their on-the-job training (OJT).

During our two-hour orientation, the MaDocs administrators gave us parents a clear idea of how difficult it is to study to become a nurse in a course compressed to four years.

Nursing used to be a five-year course. But with the increased demand for nurses, especially in the United States and other parts of the world, there have been a mass production of nurses in the Philippines and the five-year course was shortened to four.

And since the course has been shortened by one year, nursing students at MaDocs do not have any summer breaks. Unless, of course, the students themselves would opt to take their nursing course through the old, longer route.

At MaDocs, the parents were told that the hardships of nursing students start in their second year when they begin their OJT. Aside from attending their classes in school, nursing students have to report for their OJT following the same duty schedule of regular nurses from day shift to mid-shift up to night shift.

At the end of the briefings, parents were advised to understand what they are asking their daughters or sons to go through in order to get a degree in nursing. So, if it were the parents who chose the nursing course for their children, the MaDocs administrators urged, they must ask their respective daughters or sons if they would have the stamina and determination to pursue this career path. Given that kind of frank and candid briefing, I learned later that some parents pulled out their children from enrolling in the nursing course.

I just shared this personal experience after different reports came out about nursing schools for alleged cheating in the nursing licensure examinations to the recent en masse resignation of the members of the technical committee on nursing education (TCNE) under the Commission on Higher Education (CHED) to the reported departure of even nursing deans who leave the country for employment abroad. While these issues are not related to one another, they have a common impact on the quality of Filipino nurses we produce for the world.

From 310 in 2004, the number of nursing schools in the Philippines have grown to 410 this year. And I learned that MaDocs is just one of the 40 nursing schools in Metro Manila alone. The resignation of TCNE, on the other hand, was supposedly triggered by policy differences with CHED chairman Dr. Carlito Puno.

The bad news of these three issues are the allegations of leakage of the June 11 and 12 nursing licensure exams which appeared to be an offshoot of the feud among nursing review centers. The PRC released a statement denying such possibility of a leakage.

The PRC will be releasing by next month the results of the nursing board exams in question. But no matter what denials are made, the damage is done already for our would-be registered nurses who took it.

The nursing profession has become a lucrative profession especially because of the many success stories of our Filipina nurses who work abroad. But this should not be any reason for other people to pull down our own success stories.

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