Tuesday, January 18, 2011

Oversupply of nurses blamed for illegal recruitment

MANILA, Philippines – An oversupply of nurses in the country is resulting in nurses becoming victims of illegal recruitment, healthcare groups said Tuesday.

According to the Philippine Nurses Association (PNA) and the Alliance of Young Nurse Leaders and Advocates, there are 80,000 nursing board passers each year, while there are just a handful of job openings.

Hospitals also allegedly don't follow the international standard on nurse-to-patient ratio.

Instead of the 1:12 ratio, hospitals currently have between a 1:30 to 1:45 ratio, the groups said.

A lot of plantilla positions in hospitals are also not filled up.

To decrease the oversupply of nurses, either non or low-performing nursing schools should be closed.

There are more than 400 nursing schools in the country and around 112 were identified by the Commission on Higher Education as non-performing, which means the schools only have between 1% to 20% nursing board passing rate.

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