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ARTICLES |
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Filipino Nurses and the Issues Surrounding the Profession
Jul 18, 2008
1. Based on recent news releases, the Philippines currently has high unemployment and underemployment rate of Filipino nurses due to:
- Overproduction of nurses by the Philippine Nursing Schools
- Declining demand for Filipino nurses in the United States and other countries
2. Nursing has become an in demand profession abroad for Filipinos after various countries opened their doors for work and immigration opportunities (e.g. EB-3 immigrant visa for USA). Apparently, people in the business community also saw an opportunity to establish nursing schools due to the increasing number of students who want to earn a degree in nursing. However, not all the nursing schools provide quality nursing education which has affected the chances of Filipino nurses to get a job. While there are many nursing graduates, the success rate of the PRC nursing board exams has significantly decreased for the last 10 years (48% passing rate). In view of this, the Philippine Nurses Association (PNA) reiterated the need to focus on quality nursing education instead of commercializing the profession.
Below are the Philippine Nursing Board results in ten years:
3. While we agree that the Philippines produce more nurses than what the country needs locally and internationally; and the quality of nursing education weakened in years, we have yet to recognize that the demand for Filipino nurses in the USA is indeed shrinking. The deployment of Filipino nurses to the USA may have declined for the past 2 years, but, we believe that the demand continues. There may be healthcare facilities and staffing agencies who put their recruitment program on hold and do not want to spend money until retrogression lifts, but, many continue to invest in international recruitment trips and file immigrant visa petitions during retrogression in order to best position themselves and the nurses they hire for when retrogression lifts. This is evidenced by frequent advertisement releases in magazines, newspapers and other means.
If there is no demand for Filipino nurses in the USA, then why did the USA National Council of State Boards of Nursing (NCSBN) approve the conduct of the NCLEX exam in Manila beginning 2007?
The low deployment rate to the USA may be attributed to the visa retrogression that is in effect. Visa retrogression describes the delay in obtaining an immigrant (Green Card) visa when there are more people applying in a given year than the total number of visas available.
Furthermore, the visa retrogression plays a very important role in the so-called “over saturation” of domestic market for nurses that resulted in unemployment and underemployment. It can be seen in the following ways:
- Since visas are unavailable, hospital based nurses who have completed their part of the immigration process still cannot leave; thus continue their job not only to earn a living but to further enhance their hospital training and exposure, in preparation for transition to the USA. This results to unavailability of hospital jobs for other qualified nurses, more so, the newly registered nurses.
- Due to unavailability of hospital jobs, nurses - whether waiting for immigrant visa or not or whether newly registered or not find other sources of income; hence accept jobs not related to nursing.
- Likewise, in view of unavailability of hospital nursing positions, nurses - waiting for immigrant visa or not accept volunteer (no salary) work in order to acquire hospital based experience.
We believe that a great number of Filipino nurses have pending immigrant visa application to the USA and is greatly affected by the visa retrogression. It is very rare for any nurse, who graduated few years ago to not have an employer in the USA, taking into account the exam and visa fee sponsorship and other benefits. Besides the normal immigrant visa processing time is 2 years and visas started to become unavailable only in 2006. Practically speaking, nurses who started the immigrant visa process prior 2006 are now ready to leave, if not for retrogression.
When we started to deploy nurses to the USA, it is but normal for any nurse to ask for postponement of departure due to hospital employer being “under staffed”. Years later, the wheel spin and hospitals are now “over staffed”. Once the visa retrogression comes to an end and deployment of nurses turns to what used to be few years ago, then many nurses would have the opportunity to get employed in hospitals; hence, resolving the high unemployment and underemployment rate of nurses.
4. While the Philippine Nurses Association (PNA) supports the Commission on Higher Education’s (CHED) Memorandum Order No. 5 which seeks to ensure safe, ethical and quality nursing practice, it opposes the latter’s insertion of Practical Nursing Program (PN) through a proposed ladderization of the nursing curriculum. PNA’s 3 major points are:
- There is no local demand nor positions for practical nurses within the Philippine Health Care Delivery System, particularly in the light of the oversupply of nurses and subsequent unemployment of graduate nurses;
- There is no global demand for foreign-trained practical nurses, only professional nurses;
- There is no licensure of practical nurses provided for in the Philippine Nursing Act (RA 9173), thus, the institution of practical nursing programs has no legal basis.
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