Stronger curriculum urged to give ‘edge’ to Filipino nurses

MANILA, Philippines - The Philippine Overseas Employment Administration (POEA) on Wednesday said local nursing schools need to strengthen their training programs to give Filipino nurses an edge in the international labor market. Administrator Jennifer Manalili pushed for more stringent screening and thorough training amid a complaint by Filipino nurses over New Zealand’s tougher policies in the hiring of foreign nurses. “[We have a] problem of access to training facilities. We [also] have to adjust the [nursing] curriculum," Manalili told GMANews.TV in an interview on Wednesday. Manalili said that this is important because sometimes receiving countries demand workers with more training or work experience. “You want nurses hired to be familiar with the equipment," she said, adding that countries like New Zealand and Australia have high standards for the kind of workers that they hire. The New Zealand Nursing Council has even reportedly issued a circular saying that they are not anymore recognizing nursing courses completed in less than four years. This, as previous reports have indicated, is one of the ways by which the council has made the registration for overseas-trained nurses stricter. They have also reportedly raised the standards of their English language tests. “Di natin mako-control ‘yun, internal policy decisions ‘yan for the government [We cannot control that, those are internal policy decisions of the government]," she said. She added that such moves to make registration stricter might have been done to give priority to other local and foreign workers with better qualifications. “Just like in the Philippines, you have to compete with other applicants," said Manalili. Compromised New Zealand Nursing Council chief executive Carolyn Reed has recently expressed concern that the rapid increase in nursing programs in the Philippines has compromised the quality of nursing. She said there had been an “escalation" of programs offering nursing education in the Philippines – with some figures suggesting that nursing students ballooned from 30,000 in 2004 to 450,000 in 2008. According to the Board of Nursing of the Professional Regulation Commission, a total of 27,765 or 43 percent of the 64,459 who took the nursing licensure exam last June 2008 passed. And since many Filipinos take nursing as a second tertiary qualification and finish the course faster, the council feels as if they have not been trained enough. The Philippine Nurses Association (PNA) said that it has yet to confirm whether the New Zealand Nursing Council has really made it “tougher" for overseas-trained nurses, specifically Filipinos, to register. “We’re trying to confirm it," PNA chairman Ruth Tingda told GMANews.TV. About 26,000 Filipinos are in New Zealand, 300 to 500 of them employed as nurses. - GMANews.TV