After the bizarre proposal of Health Secretary Ted Herbosa to hire nursing graduates who failed the board exams, in order to shore up their numbers in government hospitals, Camarines Sur Rep. LRay Villafuerte has cited data from the Department of Health indicating that there are about 124,000 licensed and registered Filipino nurses who are jobless, unemployed, or are doing non-related work.
“The DOH should track these nurses down and try to convince a majority of them who are unemployed to work in government hospitals as a way to start reversing the worsening nursing shortage in the country,” Villafuerte proposed.
He cited data provided by the government-accredited national association of Filipino Nurses United (FNU) showing there are “about 124,000 registered nurses who, as of December 2021, were unemployed, underemployed, or doing non-nursing work.”
He said the search for registered nurses and new board passers who are either without jobs yet or doing non-nursing work could be a priority of the National Nursing Advisory Council (NNAC).
“The DOH should also find out who among the almost 30,000 graduates who passed either of the two most recent Nurse Licensure Examination are not yet working,” he added.
There are an estimated 4,500 nursing vacancies in government hospitals nationwide. If government is wondering why more than 124,000 Filipino nurses would rather be unemployed or employed elsewhere, maybe it should take a look at the compensation and benefits package, vis-à-vis the demands of the workplace, and start from there. The trouble with being smart and capable enough to pass the licensure exams is that it means those nurses neither stupid nor martyrs. If more than a hundred thousand of them are opting not to seek employment at a government facility, then perhaps our country doesn’t have a shortage of nurses, but a shortage of viable opportunities for otherwise capable and competent Filipinos.*
