Nursing students’ OJT fees in hospitals beyond our jurisdiction – CHED

MANILA, Philippines – Commission on Higher Education (CHED) Chairman Dr. Patricia Licuanan said that CHED has no jurisdiction over hospitals that collect the OJT fees from nursing students. “Essentially, it should be the department of Health (that should look into it),” Licuanan told The STAR. “We have no authority over the hospitals at all,” she added.

Licuanan stressed that nursing students made to pay the OJT fees are technically considered as graduates already, leaving them out of the CHED’s jurisdiction. “As far as the rules go, they have graduated already. CHED has no jurisdiction anymore,” Licuanan said.

“It’s up to the DOH and the hospitals to come to a kind of solution,” Licuanan said.

It will be recalled that lawmakers in both the House and the Senate have spoken out against the collection of OJT fees from nurse-trainees.

Kabataan party-list Rep. Raymond Palatino, has called for an investigation into the matter, saying that his office has been deluged by complaints from nursing students and their parents about the considerable additional costs the OJT fees was bringing to nursing students.

Palatino said that the OJT fees makes up an average of about 30 percent of a nursing student’s payments for one semester of nursing education.

“It has been a prevalent practice in recent years among hospitals to charge nursing students exorbitant fees simply to grant them the ‘privilege’ of rendering services in their institutions. It has been reported that some hospitals even exploit this situation by refusing to fill in vacant plantilla positions with actual nursing professionals and simply let their student trainees do the work in order to cut on expenses and earn more profits,” he bared.

Palatino said that the state of affairs where hospitals employ nursing students and charge them for the “opportunity” was tantamount to labor abuse.

“Students and parents are at the losing end here. Despite rendering actual work for months, they are required to pay for the public service they provide and even arrange for medical supplies,” Palatino bewailed.

“No less than the Labor Code of the Philippines recognizes work rendered even by apprentices and learners, and provides for the protection and promotion of their rights and benefits,” Palatino said in a resolution he filed calling for an investigation in aid of legislation on the OJT fee collection.

“Students are still obliged to pay OJT fees even if they are the ones who will hunt for companies that will accept them as interns. Both the Commission on Higher Education and the Department of Health should disallow such fees so that students will not be exploited by hospitals through burdensome fees,” Palatino said. –Rainier Allan Ronda (The Philippine Star)