The proposal of Health Secretary Teodoro Herbosa to tap unlicensed nurses to fill vacancies in the health care sector has been met with a counter proposal from Philippine Nurses Association (PNA) president Melvin Miranda who asked government to instead prioritize the passage of a comprehensive nursing bill that would narrow the pay gap between private and public nurses.
Miranda said there were “two significant considerations” government should focus on.
“One is the specific provision aligning the salary of our [public] nurses with salary grade 15 [with their counterparts] in the private sector,” he said.
Another is improving nurses’ working conditions which has been a perennial problem in both private and public medical facilities. Under the Department of Health guidelines, the ideal nurse-to-patient ration is 1:12, which is a large gap compared to the global standards of 1:4.
He pushed for a joint dialogue with concerned agencies such as the Department of Budget Management, the Department of Labor and Employment, and Department of the Interior and Local Government, to address the impact of devolution on the implementation of the Salary Standardization Law in some health facilities.
Based on DOH data, there are more than 675,000 licensed nurses, but only about 26 percent are currently working in the country.
Herbosa’s plan to address this severe shortage proposes that nursing graduates who failed the board exams would be given a “temporary license” but in a limited capacity, allowing them to work at a government hospital under the supervision of board certified nurses.
Miranda criticized it as “definitely not fair,” pointing out that professional nurses would suffer due to their “wider scope of practice,” while at the same time they would also be accountable for the actions of unlicensed nurses under their supervision.
“Creative” band aid solutions such as the proposal of the DOH secretary to employ unlicensed nurses with certain conditions could be given consideration as a short term fix, however, that is a game our government shouldn’t be playing. The focus should be on the long term, which is finding the ways and means to get licensed Filipino nurses to stay in the country, where they can support our health care system that needs them more than other countries that can afford to pay them better, while at the same time staying and helping build stronger families.*
