Oversupply of Nurses?

Jul 10, 2008

Could it be that the Philippines got too excited about the demand for nurses worldwide that today, there are too many nurses than the healthcare institutions can handle.

A report from the University of the Philippines Dean of the College of Nursing revealed that indeed our country has so many nurses that new nursing graduates are finding it hard to find jobs. The competition among nursing grduates is so stiff that local hospitals can now afford to hire nurses for free.

Another proof that we have too many nurses is a report from the President of the Philippine Nurses Association (PNA), Leah Paquiz, that the quota requirement for migrant workers in America for this year had been reached.

This is not the first time that the Philippines had experienced an oversupply of professionals of a particular field. There was a time when demand for Physical Therapists (PT) abroad made the course very popular among Filipino students only to find out later that the supply becomes greater than the demand and many PT graduates found themselves jobless or if employed, in a job that offer very little or no monetary pay.

The cliché that history repeats itself seems to be true in this case as it seems to be happening again with the nurses. In spite of the obvious oversupply of nurses, nursing schools continues to proliferate and offer nursing courses to hopeful students; almost all of them wishing to land a job overseas.

What’s worse is that many of these new nursing schools are mere diploma mills adding more number of nurses every year. The government program that “ladderizes” nursing education allowing students to be practical nurses also adds to the oversupply problem.

The impending future of too many nurses posed a serious problem for the country that should not be ignored. Paquiz of PNA said, “There is no local demand or positions for practical nurses within the Philippine Health Care Delivery system particularly in the light of the oversupply of nurses and subsequent unemployment of graduate nurses.”

The PNA are calling the attention of the Commission on Higher Education (CHED) to monitor and be strict against new nursing schools and even on courses that offer two-year practical nursing program. Paquiz said that foreign employers still prefer the four-year college-degree nurses who passed the Licensure Board Exams.

A PNA statement said, The PNA “strongly objects to the institution of the Practical Nursing program and vehemently rejects the proposed ladderization of the nursing curriculum,” a PNA statement said.

The PNA also want to emphasize that more than the quantity, the Philippines should focus more on producing quality nurses and not to view nursing as a surefire way out of poverty.

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