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MANILA, Philippines -- Filipino nurses still want to work in the United States, as the number that took the US licensure test remain at 15,079 for the first nine months of 2008, an official of a labor group said Thursday.
In an e-mailed statement to media, former Senator Ernesto Herrera, Trade Union Congress of the Philippines secretary general, said the number of Filipino nurses who have so far taken the National Council Licensure Examination (NCLEX) was practically the same for the same period last year, 15,083.
He said these figures showed that Filipino nurses still have their sights set on the US.
Citing NCLEX statistics, Herrera said that the Philippines has remained
America's number one source of foreign nurses. In the nine-month period, he said the other nationalities who took the exam were: 2,474 Indians; 1,306 South Koreans; 676 Cubans; and 520 Canadians.
In 2007, a record total of 21,499 Filipinos took the NCLEX for the first time (excluding repeaters). This was up 6,328 or 42 percent compared to the 15,171 Filipinos that took the NCLEX for the first time in 2006.
At the same time, the former head of the Senate committee on labor pushed for the increase in the entry-level monthly basic pay of government staff nurses to P16,093, as mandated by the Philippine Nursing Act of 2002, lamenting that many government staff nurses are still receiving only P8,000 a month.
Herrera also repeated his call to the Commission on Higher Education, especially under its new chairman Emmanuel Angeles, and the Professional Regulation Commission, also under its new chairman Nicolas Lapeña Jr., to close down a growing number of substandard nursing schools.
He said more than 500,000 students were enrolled in nursing schools nationwide.
Of the 132,187 nursing graduates that took the last two Philippine nursing licensure tests in December 2007 and in June this year, only 56,689 or less than 43 percent passed.
A report by the Commission on Audit previously revealed that out of 263 nursing schools surveyed, only 111 had at least 50 percent of their graduates passing the local nursing eligibility test from 2001 to 2005.
