Review and Control of Nursing Schools in the Philippines by CHED is Being Pushed
Several concerned groups have been asking CHED to look closely into the review and control of nursing schools operating in the Philippines particularly those schools without proper training facilities and tie ups with local hospitals to train their graduates. This came after the oversupply issue on Filipino nurses raised concerns for more production.
CHED was quick to react that the commission cannot just close down a school just because it does not have connections with local hopsitals needed to train the future nurses. However, CHED realizes that indeed a lot of nursing schools have been performing below expectations and metrics set by the commission. CHED promised to act on these schools immediately.
In the meantime, thousands of board passers who studied from those ill-connected schools have no experience at all in the hospital environment making them inadmissible to foreign job opportunities. And for those lucky nurses who are able to get employment appears to have lack of experience in specialized fields like ICU, medical surgery, nicu, emergency, dialysis and cardiac care that are the most sought-after skills needed by foreign hospitals.
This problem will continue to grow if CHED will not act on it quickly.
CHED Disapproves Ceiling Proposal for Nursing Students Enrollees to Curb Oversupply
COMMISSION on Higher Education (Ched) chairman Emmanuel Angeles denounced proposals imposing a ceiling on the number of college students that would like to take up nursing in an effort to put a halt on the oversupply of nurses in the Philippines.
CHED cited the that setting a limit to the number of enrollees to be accepted in the nursing schools all over the country will mean a violation of the basic human right to choose the education the students want to pursue.
About 470 nursing schools proliferate in the country with an annual enrolment of nearly 100,000. Only a handful of these schools are considered excellent by CHED with an annual passing rate of 90 percent. Last year, 64.909 nursing hopefuls took the board and eventually 31,000 of them passed.
CHED said that the only way they can limit the oversupply is to limit the nursing schools providing nursing courses. The most valid basis of barring a school from conducting nursing courses are lack of proper facility and incompetence of faculty members. However, we are yet to see these control measures being implemented in the school system.