STREETWISE*
Digging Deeper into the Leakage
Is it so difficult to
see that the scandalous extent and circumstances of the recent board exam
leakage is in direct proportion to the degree of commercialization of
nursing education as exemplified by the proliferation of substandard
nursing schools churning out unqualified, if not incompetent,
graduates? Shall we be content with merely calling for better regulation
by the PRC and by the Commission on Higher Education (CHEd)?
BY CAROL PAGADUAN-ARAULLO
Business World
Posted by Bulatlat
As a medical student learns early on, signs and symptoms are mere
indicators of an underlying illness; real cure comes from diagnosing and
treating the disease, not just mitigating its manifestations. The concept
is not difficult for even the layman to understand since it is grounded on
the truism that problem solving requires digging deep at the root causes
if a genuine solution is to be found.
Why then the seeming inability, or perhaps unwillingness, of government to
see beyond the current scandal of the nursing board exam leakage? Is this
just another case of unscrupulous government officials colluding with
profiteering owners of nursing schools and review centers to allow
unqualified examinees to cheat their way to their licenses? Or is there
something more here than meets the eye?
The magnitude of the problem is laid bare by the following: the filing of
charges against two examiners from the Board of Nursing (BoN) of the
Professional Regulation Commission (PRC); the forced resignation of the
president and vice president of the Philippine Nurses Association (PNA)
implicated in the leakage and its cover-up; and the alleged involvement of
scores of nursing schools and review centers in disseminating the leaked
exam questions to their students. There are worrisome signs that cheating
has become systematized and a criminal syndicate in cahoots with
government officials is on the loose.
Worse, the PRC, relying on the BoN findings instead of creating an
independent investigative body, initially denied any possibility of a
leakage with the assertion that the examination system “has been so
streamlined that leakages are now a thing of the past.”
When it could no
longer sweep the problem under the rug it admitted the leakage and
pinpointed responsibility to just two of its examiners.
Now the PRC appears to have taken the unprincipled tack of minimizing the
impact of the leakage on the integrity of the examinations. The PRC cited
some statistical manipulations that they claim “solved” the problem and
hastily administered the nursing oath to those they certified to have
passed (until a court restraining order stopped the oath taking). They
stood pat on the position that there was no need for a retake of the
examinations by any of the examinees, including those who reviewed with
the R.A.Gapuz Review Center (RAGRC), a center that witnesses claim
distributed answers to exam questions the night before the June 11 board
examinations. Not surprisingly, RAGRC now boasts of having bagged the 3rd
to 10th place in the exams.
From news reports, the PRC even brought in supposedly well-placed labor
recruiters who assured the examinees that they would still be eligible for
placement in US hospitals despite the controversy surrounding their
licensure exams. It appeared to be a calculated move to counter reports
that local as well as foreign hospitals had indicated they would refuse to
hire nurses from Batch 2006.
Meanwhile Malacañang has chosen to uphold the PRC position hook, line and
sinker. While vowing to go after those responsible for the leakage, it
immediately exonerated the PRC itself of any responsibility and
peremptorily declared that the nursing leakage was more of an exception
rather than the rule. Mrs. Arroyo even praised PRC chair Leonor Rosero,
her personal dentist whose husband is a close friend and fellow Rotarian
of the first gentleman, for doing a great job. She also took the “no
retake” position popular with the examinees in what seemed to be a classic
Arroyo trick of pandering to the crowd when no major personal or political
stakes are involved.
There is no indication that the Arroyo administration sees the current
brouhaha as a reason, or even an occasion, to seriously study what ails
the nursing sector. Consider that nurses (as well as
doctors-turned-nurses) continue to be one of our top exports as a
labor-exporting country. The alarm has been raised by the World Health
Organization (WHO) that the Philippines faces the prospect of a major
crisis in its health care system with the exodus of health personnel for
more lucrative jobs abroad.
Is it so difficult to see that the scandalous extent and circumstances of
the recent board exam leakage is in direct proportion to the degree of
commercialization of nursing education as exemplified by the
proliferation of substandard nursing schools churning out unqualified, if
not incompetent, graduates? Shall we be content with merely calling for
better regulation by the PRC and by the Commission on Higher Education (CHEd)?
Shall we not examine what fuels this soaring demand for a nursing diploma
and license to practice the nursing profession that provides fertile
ground for all sorts of corrupt scams victimizing students, their parents
and future patients at that?
Certainly it is not a sudden surge of humanitarianism, of people wanting
to care for the sick and infirm. On purely economic terms, the demand is
fed by the desire to go abroad and earn a decent income that can provide a
comfortable life and a secure future for one’s family.
Such a modest, middle-class dream is no longer possible for the vast
majority in the Philippine setting. What everybody seems to know is that
the passport out of the Philippine Rut into the American Dream is indeed
that nursing license.
Rather than address the endemic problem of unemployment and
underemployment, successive governments from Marcos to the present have
pursued a short-sighted policy of exporting labor. From a stop-gap
measure, the export of overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) has evolved to
become the major dollar-earner and life-saver of a chronically floundering
economy with roughly eight million OFWs, a tenth of the population,
remitting US $10 billion last year.
Thus the demand for nurses in the U.S. and UK has become the main driving
force shaping the development of nursing education and the profession
today. Not the needs and requirements of a highly underserved people in
the throes of hunger, malnutrition and preventable diseases.
When government cannot see beyond dollar remittances and will do anything
and everything to keep them coming, it will turn a blind eye to the
deepening crisis of the Philippine health care system; it will paper over
the festering problems in nursing education and the nursing profession
that the recent leakage scandal has so glaringly exposed.
With provincial and even major urban hospitals scrambling to stay open
despite the steady loss of its doctors and nurses, the future is bleak
while government policies remaining unchanged. Needless to say, the long
and short of it is that the majority of our people end up, once more, on
the losing end. Business World / Posted by Bulatlat
You may email feedback at
carol_araullo@yahoo.com.
*Published in Business World
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