More nurses prefer MidEast to US

FEWER Filipino nurses now want to work in the United States, because of the global recession, the Trade Union Congress of the Philippines said yesterday.

In a statement, TUCP secretary-general and former Senator Ernesto Herrera said this could be gleaned from a drop in the number of nurses who took the US NCLEX, or National Council Licensure Examinations for registered and practical nurses, during the first months of the year.

This was the first time that such a decline had been noted, Herrera stressed. “The deepening recession in America has clearly diminished the desire of some Filipino nurses to seek employment there,” said Herrera, the former chairman of the Senate committee on labor, employment and human resources development. He noted that a growing number of Filipino nurses now prefer to work in labor markets outside the US, particularly the United Kingdom and the Middle East. The 8,272 Filipino nurses who took the NCLEX—which qualifies someone who would pass to work in the US—reflect a decline of 1,565 from 9,837 in the six months to June 2007, the TUCP said.

Filipinos accounted for 37 percent of the 22,500 nurses—educated outside the US—who took the NCLEX during the first six months of the year, according to the TUCP. For the whole of 2008, 20,746 Filipinos took the NCLEX as non-repeaters compared to 21,299 in 2007. That was a drop of 3.5 percent, Herrera said. The number of nurses from India, Korea, Canada and Cuba seeking jobs in the US has also dropped, according to him. These countries are among the top suppliers of foreign nurses to the US.

Nurses from India who took the NCLEX in the first semester dropped by 56 percent to 750 from 1,715, Herrera said. TUCP records also showed that NCLEX takers from Southcash Korea were down 35 percent to 613 from 934; from Canada, down 36 percent to 314 from 494; and from Cuba, down 38 percent to 192 from 309. There are now some Filipino 600,000 nurses actively looking for jobs here and abroad, and many of them are forced to seek work outside their profession, according to Herrera. They include the 99,837 who passed the nursing licensure examinations from July 2008 to July 2009.

To help ease the problem, the government has engaged 10,000 of them under the Nurses Assigned in Rural Service program. The project allows nurses to serve in the country’s depressed municipalities for six months in return for a monthly allowance of P8,000. –Macon Ramos Araneta, Manila Standard Today