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Friday, October 27, 2006
Court allows oath taking by more than 15,000 nurses
MANILA -- An amicable settlement of sorts was reached Thursday by parties in the suit seeking to nullify the June 2006 nursing licensure examination due to a leakage.
Labor Secretary Arturo Brion initiated conciliatory talks to allow more than 15,000 nursing graduates who passed the exams to take their oaths.
The agreement was reached during the mediation proceedings held at the hearing room of Associate Justice Vicente Veloso of the Court of Appeals (CA) First Division.
Veloso said the appellate court has no intention of issuing any more injunctions stopping the oath taking of nurses.
"We have no intention to stop the exercise of the rights of those who passed. Those who can take the oath is now embodied in our ruling," Veloso said.
Present in the meeting were officials from Professional Regulation Commission (PRC), Board of Nursing, Office of the Solicitor General, counsels for petitioners, respondents and interveners.
The CA called the parties for conciliatory talks and mediation in a resolution issued last October 25 based upon the recommendation of Brion.
In his letter submitted to the appellate court, Brion urged the CA to consider the use of mediation approach in resolving the controversy involving the leakage.
With the settlement, there is no more legal impediment for the oath taking of the nursing graduates who were among the 41.24 percent of board takers who passed the exam out of 42,000 before the leakage became public.
Last October 13, the CA junked the petition of the Rene Luis Tadle, president of the University of Sto. Tomas (UST) College of Nursing Faculty Association, to halt the oath-taking of new nurses, pending the result of an investigation regarding the leakage of the June 11 and 12 nursing licensure exams.
The CA decision called for a selective retake of the nursing licensure exam among those whose names were merely added to the list of successful examinees.
This after the appellate court declared null and void the assailed Resolution 31 of the PRC approving the Board of Nursing's initial formula for the recomputation of the results in the exam tainted by the leakage anomaly.
The resolution invalidated portions of the nursing examinations due to leakage. Some 42,600 students took the nursing exam but only 17,821 passed the tests.
The CA ordered the Board of Nursing and PRC to restore the names of the 1,186 successful examinees and include them again in the list of 41.24 percent who actually passed the exams, before the recomputation.
It also allowed the oath taking and issuance of licenses to all of the 41.24 percent successful examinees who were untainted by the leakage scandal.
The leakage has caused the US National Council of State Boards of Nursing Inc. (NCSBN) to put off its plan to include the Philippines among its international testing centers, according to a top official of the NCSBN.
Faith Fields, newly elected NCSBN, called on President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo at Malacañang's Music Room last Wednesday.
The NCSBN is a not-for-profit organization of the boards of nursing of 50 states in the US, the District of Columbia, and the US territories of American Samoa, Guam, Northern Marianas, Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands.
The Commission on Filipinos Overseas is lobbying for the inclusion of the Philippines as an international testing center on the National Council Licensure Examination (NCLEX) for nurses.
The NCLEX is a licensure examination taken by more than 9,000 Filipino nurses yearly, with the hope of securing jobs in hospitals and health institutions in the US.
The NCLEX can be taken in US territories and selected international test centers in Hong Kong, Korea, United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, Germany, India, Mexico and Taiwan.
"Obviously, it (leakage) has affected (our decision) because we were set to make a decision. When the leakage occurred, we decided to back off to get the results of how you handle that," Fields said in an ambush interview after her courtesy call on Arroyo.
She said Filipino nurses make up about 80 percent of foreign educated nurses that come to the US. "We're very interested to see how you handle the crisis and I think it's something that you don't want to waste the opportunity to make your system better," she said. (ECV/Sunnex)
(October 27, 2006 issue)
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