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Manila Bulletin devider Philippines devider National devider Attention DOH: Villafuerte proposes alternative to hiring 'second-rate medical frontliners'

Attention DOH: Villafuerte proposes alternative to hiring 'second-rate medical frontliners'

Published Jul 6, 2023 07:10 am
Camarines Sur 2nd district Rep. LRay Villafuerte (Facebook)



The Department of Health (DOH) ought to seek and hire from a pool of over 120,000 licensed nurses who are believed to jobless, underemployed, or doing non-nursing jobs in order to address the shortage of nurses in Philippine government hospitals. Thus, said Camarines Sur 2nd district Rep. LRay Villafuerte, following DOH Secretary Ted Herbosa's earlier suggestion for government to employ non-board exam passers or "second-rate medical frontliners", as what the solon called them. “The immediate hiring of still-jobless NLE passers and or already licensed nurses but who are unemployed, underemployed or doing non-nursing jobs is a much better option than Secretary Ted [Herbosa]’s plan," Villafuerte reckoned. The veteran congressman and Commission on Appointments (CA) majority leader said that tapping those who failed to pass the Nurse Licensure Examination (NLE) could "end up being a cure worse than the disease". Villafuerte noted that the government-accredited Filipino Nurses United (FNU) had recently bared that there were about 124,000 registered nurses who, as of December 2021, were unemployed, underemployed or doing non-nursing work. The FNU--which cited DOH data--further said that a combined 29,293 nursing graduates had passed the last two NLEs—18,529 in the November 2022 and 10,764 in the May 2023. Nobody knows who among these 124,000 registered nurses as of end-2021 or the almost 30,000 new nursing board passers are still out of work or  doing non-nursing jobs at this time,” Villafuerte said. He said the DOH "would do well to track them down" in order to convince the unemployed among them to work in government hospitals "as a way to start reversing the worsening nursing shortage in the country". The DOH estimates that there are 4,500 nursing vacancies in government hospitals nationwide.
He cautioned Herbosa against hiring nursing graduates who flunked the NLE, as this could "likely open the door to the wholesale hiring of second-rate medical frontliners that could undercut our healthcare system in the long haul". “While we laud newly confirmed DOH secretary...for thinking out of the box in finding swift ways to reverse the worsening nursing shortage, I fear that the conditional hiring of unlicensed nurses or graduates who had flunked the professional board exams as a way to instantly fill up the increasing number of vacancies could, in the end, chip away at our vaunted healthcare system,” Villafuerte further said.

Related Tags

NLE Ted Herbosa Nurses Rep. LRay Villafuerte The Department of Health (DOH)
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