THE result of the July 2010 Nursing Licensure Examination was a double victory for the Cebu Normal University (CNU). Aside of having five topnotchers, the school also landed in the top 10 among the 209 nursing schools (with 100 and more examinees) in the country in terms of the national passing percentage rate.
A GLUT of graduates has thinned out chances of employment for the country’s nurses, the owner of one of Cebu’s leading medical schools said yesterday.
Dr. Potenciano Larrazabal Jr., owner and president of Cebu Doctor’s University, said nursing schools should hire or help their nurses find employment in hospitals.
Amid the decline in the global demand for Filipino nurses, more graduates of science-related courses are now pursuing a degree in medicine, the Board of Medicine said over the weekend.
Board of Medicine member Jose Cueto said the lessening of employment opportunities for nurses abroad seems to have contributed to the increase in National Medical Admission Test (NMAT) examinees.
CALIFORNIA, United States—I love Filipino nurses.
Next to cheap garments at Wal-Mart and female impersonators, I’d have to put them on the top of the list as the Philippines’ leading export.
If the country had a team mascot, it would have to be the “Fighting Nurses.” (Notre Dame has the “Fighting Irish,” why not?)
So, of course, I’m alarmed by the news that a de facto ban against hiring Filipino nurses at the St. Luke’s Campus of Sutter Health’s California Pacific Medical Center (CPMC) appears to be policy in San Francisco.
Nurse Ever Lalin, like others in the first batch of 98 nurses and caregivers who went to Japan May last year for a training stint preparatory to taking the Japanese nursing licensure exam, had no prior lessons in the Niponggo language.
“Halimaw ah (A monster’s feat),” cheered nurse bloggers when it was announced last March that Ever, 34, was the only Filipino to pass the difficult licensure exam and the only foreign applicant to get it on the first try. Two Indonesians who had arrived a year earlier also passed. The exam included a proficiency test in “kanji,” Chinese characters that are a mindset away from those schooled in the Roman alphabet.
TOKYO—Japan allows hundreds of Southeast Asian nurses to work on short-term contracts, but the health-care workers say the exams they must pass for the right to stay longer are so tough that almost all flunk them.
Nurses and care-givers from Indonesia and the Philippines are now asking their host country to relax the requirements that force them to quickly learn thousands of Japanese characters and medical terms on top of their work duties.
The Philippines’ ambassador to the United States is urging American licensure authorities to defer the implementation of a 1-year ban on Filipino physical therapy (PT) graduates who want to take the US National Physical Therapy Examination (NPTE).
In a press release, Philippine Ambassador to the US Willy Gaa said he is asking the Federation of State Boards of Physical Therapy, which administers the NPTE, to allow Filipino PT graduates who are already in the US to take the test.
FAIRFAX, Virginia – The Maryland Department of Labor reversed an order that withheld unemployment benefits from one of three Filipina nurses who were fired from a Baltimore hospital for speaking Tagalog.
Administrative judge Stuart Breslow sided with the nurses when he said in his ruling that no patient was ever put in danger when they spoke Tagalog during their break.
Filipinos here and back home are venting their dismay, distress and in many instances, seething anger over a US group’s decision to stop licensure examinations for physical therapists from the Philippines and 3 other countries.
WHO advises earlier treatment among people with HIV
19 JULY 2010 | GENEVA | VIENNA — An estimated 5.2 million people in low and middle-income countries were receiving life-saving HIV treatment at the end of 2009, according to the latest update from WHO.
WHO estimates that 1.2 million people started treatment in 2009, bringing the total number of people receiving treatment to 5.2 million, compared to 4 million at the end of 2008.
