More and more nurses shunning US job market

THE number of Filipino nurses wanting to work in the United States dropped by 42 percent to 5,630 in 2011 from 9,789 the year before, a former labor leader and now a lawmaker said Monday.

LPG party-list Rep. Arnel Ty said the 5,630 Filipinos who took the National Council Licensure Exam in 2011 was only one-fourth of the 21,499 who took the US licensure exam at the height of the nursing boom in 2007.

“In 2011 we had the fewest number of Filipino nurses taking the [exam] [for the first time] since 2001, when only 4,456 took the exam,” Ty said.

The number of Filipino nurses taking the licensure exam for the first time, excluding repeaters, is considered a good indicator of how many of them are hoping to practice in the US.

Ty said 145,081 Filipino nurses had taken the licensure test since 1995, without counting repeaters, in the hopes of pursuing careers in the US.

Licensure test statistics show that six out of every 10 Filipino nurses who take the exam eventually pass, and if not on their first attempt then on their second.

Ty has been pushing for new legislation that will establish a special jobs plan here for the growing number of unemployed Filipino nurses.

The Professional Regulation Commission estimates the number of jobless Filipino nurses to hit 298,000 this year, and those will include the 68,000 who took the local licensure exam in December.

As proposed by Ty in House Bill 4582, the jobs plan would be an expanded version of the Nurses Assigned in Rural Service, the short-lived government project that enlisted nurses to improve health care in the 1,000 poorest towns in 2009.

The bill seeks to install a Special Program for the Employment of Nurses in Urban and Rural Services, which is aimed at mobilizing 10,000 nurses every year.

They would each serve a six-month tour of duty and receive a monthly stipend not lower than Salary Grade 15, the higher starting pay for public nurses mandated by a 2002 law. -Vito Barcelo, Manila Standard Today