Too Many Bad Apples in the Basket

The Philippines is known worldwide to produce quality nurses. For the past couple of decades, the demand for Filipino nurses has been so great that numerous nursing schools  started coming out like mushrooms.

Recently, the Trade Union Congress of the Philippines has suggested that CHED make public all the 177 substandard nursing schools in the Philippines [read full text here]. TUCP said it’s CHED’s duty to warn the parents and their children of these inferior schools.

There are over 400,000 nursing students in the Philippines today, if more than half of this number comes from substandard nursing schools, there is no telling when Filipino nurses will stop getting praises they’ve received since time immemorial. The immaculate image of our nurses will be stained just because these schools can’t give their students the proper education they’ve paid for.

The local board exam measures one’s knowledge on  the foundations of nursing and its basic skills. Like what one of my professors said, being a board passer only ticks off one qualification in the long list of credentials a newly graduate nursing student should have: LICENSE. Having a license makes you a nurse, but it doesn’t make you a good one.  That 2 letters affixed after your name is the minimum requirement to being a nurse.  If one school can’t even produce a decent number of qualified nurses, what happens to their students after graduation?

Education, they say, is the first step to a good career. If these schools can’t give their students a good one, why allow them to continue on with what they’re doing? Do we have to risk the future of our students? Money is hard to earn and nursing is not a cheap course. Even the lowliest parents would try to get one of their children in a nursing school, in hopes, that after 4 years, their efforts will be worth something.

The list of underperforming schools should be released to the public as a warning – to schools who think they can get away with the kind of education they offer and to families to be more careful in choosing a nursing school for their children.

There are too many bad apples in the basket. If none of us will try to remove the bad ones, The Philippines will lose one of its important, profitable and respectable workforce.

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