Unlicensed nurses

I am very leery about the plan of Health Secretary Teodoro Herbosa to allow government hospitals to hire Nursing graduates who failed in their board exams. I do not think the nurse shortage is so dire government would now renege on its duty to ensure efficiency and accountability in public health just to acquire enough warm bodies.

I am not oblivious to the fact that because of the search for better pay, our nurses would rather endure the hardships of working overseas just to ensure a better future for themselves and their families, never mind if in the process they leave a virtual vacuum in domestic healthcare services. Life is intrinsically personal so it is not their fault that nurses leave.

Government, though, is duty-bound to deal with any situation in the best way it can for the good of the greatest number. And I do not think it is in the best interest of anyone that it would now actively take shortcuts in a process that otherwise requires it to play the lead role implementing. Especially if it created the very situation it now must deal with.

The reason nurses are leaving is because government has failed the nurses. For decades it has adamantly refused to act on the oppressive and exploitative conditions nurses found themselves in here at home. They work extremely long hours doing risky and backbreaking work for pay that is a slap to their degrees and an insult to their human dignity.

I will not go into a litany of where government is instead expending its skewed priorities because they are pretty obvious I might only insult the readers' intelligence. But for refusing to deal with the problem squarely, it has now come to a head where government can no longer pretend it does not exist or that it can still be swept under the rug one more time.

And yet for all its cavalier callousness, government cannot do better than come up with the most inane and hare-brained solutions to the nurse crisis. Hire non-board passers as government nurses? Look, it is not so much as not passing the board. Surely, there is so much to learn in four years of school and I believe every graduate is a real nurse.

To me the real problem in not passing the board is the lack of a license to practice the profession. A license is essentially a legal authority and in this world it is government that can issue such authority. Government in fact requires such legal authority on so many professions, trades, and endeavors it is foolish for it to be the one to drop it.

I would, indeed, not be surprised if in the direst of scenarios some private hospital somewhere might go out on a limb and try its luck with the same shortcuts just to stay in business. But government? The issuer of licenses? Not only will it inspire violations everywhere, more importantly it will inspire mediocrity instead of excellence.

Since government loves to spend so much on incentives to sectors that do not even deserve them, my proposal is this: Subsidize the nurses. Pay them salaries that will make most of them stay. Put it in the budget. Source it from earnings of the Maharlika Fund. Source it from intelligence funds. There is money in government if only government is willing.