Are you a Board Passer Nurse Without a Job? Maybe You Also Lack Hospital Training and Experience.
Based on what has been reported in many news angle, it seems that the lack of training facility for nursing graduates such as local hospitals, including government-owned and controlled in the Philippines are producing more and more unemployed nurses.
Although many of our unemployed nurses passed the local nursing board, one of the key pain of nursing recruiters in the country is the lack of the nurses’ experience and training in actual hospital work. Without it, they cannot be endorsed to potential foreign employers who are seeking experienced nurses only.
The root cause of the problem is not the oversupply of nurses per se but the lack of government funding even to hire these nurses in the government-owned hospitals. If the government can allocate funds for this and provide even temporary employment to our nurses, then they can go out and find work elsewhere after.
The sad news is, there are reported cases that some new nurses are even sacrificing and more than willing to pay the local hospital just to admit them so they can have work experience in their resumes. This is becoming a trend and some folks are reported to be benefiting from it.
It is also well known that there are a lot of shortage of nurses and doctors in most of the government owned hospitals aside from the scary facilities that have not been refreshed for years due to lack of funding. Some patient are more afraid of contracting sickness inside government hospitals than their ailments.
We urged the Philippine government to look into this funding solution quickly. Adding necessary funding to local government hospitals so they can hire nurses (and doctors) to gain experience is a win-win trade off not only for the nurses but also for the sick Filipino folks as well.
Almost Half a Million Registered Nurses Without Jobs in the Philippines
The Philippine Regulation Commission (PRC) admitted recently that there are about 400,000 Registered Nurses in the country today that are jobless - that’s almost half a million people jobless! (Is this oversupply or what?)
PRC commissioner Ruth Padilla states there is not enough demand locally for our Pinoy nurses and only about 60,000 posts are currently occupied in both private and public sectors.
The demand for nurses has continued to decline over the past month and the government is trying very hard to bring back more demands from foreign countries including even our ASEAN neighbors. The PRC boasted that our registered nurses are still far more better in qualifications when compared to their ASEAN counterparts hence the potential for sourcing in Asia is a welcome opportunity.
But soon other countries are expected to rise as a competitor to the Pinoy registered nurses qualification. It’s not a matter of if but when this will happen. In the light of this, the government is pushing for more updated education and rigid training for all nursing graduates to keep up with the pace of the modern times and nursing requirements worldwide.