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Tuesday, April 05, 2005
Oledan: Beeline
By Radzini Oledan
Slice of life
"As more nurses leave and as fewer are qualifying for the job, we can only surmise that the situation in our local hospitals can only deteriorate. Clearly, the country has been exporting more nurses than it is producing."
WHERE have our nurses gone? Skilled and trained nurses are a requisite of proper health care especially in rural areas and small hospitals, which relies on their training on quality health care.
Today, most of the nursing graduates get little experience in local hospitals, apply for work abroad and leave for overseas. Their continued exodus is threatening our very own health care system. But who can blame them? Their pay in local and even private hospitals are a pittance against the rate offered by foreign hospitals, not to mention the severe lack of opportunities in the local arena.
In the last 10 years, the Philippines sent close to 90,000 nurses overseas, making us second to India as the largest source of nurses. Hence we see most of our nursing graduates who get little experience in local hospitals and eventually apply for work abroad, joining the rest who are making a beeline for overseas jobs.
As more nurses leave and as fewer are qualifying for the job, we can only surmise that the situation in our local hospitals can only deteriorate. Clearly, the country has been exporting more nurses than it is producing.
However, it is not only nurses who are lining up for overseas jobs. Doctors are also fast disappearing. Most have gone into a career shift as nurses and around 2,000 of them have already taken up the Nursing Board Exams and even topping the test in 2003 and 2004.
While the motivation to working abroad is the desire to help better the lives of their respective families here, it could not also be denied that the globalization of labor has also contributed to a materialistic attitude among the graduates of today.
In a profession which challenges right values and attitude of selflessly serving others, the intense economic hardships in our own country pushes them to leave their own families and start out in a foreign place--oftentimes bearing loneliness and facing multitude of risks.
As it is now, the need for cheap yet highly educated caregivers and nurses abroad and the desperate effort of government to keep the economy afloat by sending as many contract workers overseas has resulted in the mushrooming of illegal recruitment agencies and fraudulent immigration practices to surface.
The laxity in putting in place mechanisms to protect our workers here and abroad is putting the human resource at great risk. Meanwhile, our patients are robbed of the services of efficient nurses joining the beeline for overseas work.
Time will come when there will be too few health care providers left to respond to the growing local needs.
For Bisaya stories from Davao. Click here. (April 5, 2005 issue)
Write letter to the editor.Click here.
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