MANILA — There are about 124,000 licensed and registered Filipino nurses who are jobless, underemployed or are doing non-related work, a lawmaker said recently, citing data from the Department of Health (DOH).
“The DOH should track these nurses down and try to convince a majority of them who are unemployed to work in government hospitals as a way to start reversing the worsening nursing shortage in the country,” Camarines Sur Rep. LRay Villafuerte proposed.
Villafuerte made the disclosure following attempts by Health Secretary Ted Herbosa to hire nursing graduates who failed the board exams, which the lawmaker described as risky that could end up as “a cure worse than the disease.”
“Nobody knows who among these 124,000 registered nurses as of end-2021 or the almost 30,000 new nursing board passers are still out of work or doing non-nursing jobs at this time,” Villafuerte said.
He cited data provided by the government-accredited national association Filipino Nurses United (FNU) showing there are “about 124,000 registered nurses who, as of December 2021, were unemployed, underemployed or doing non-nursing work.”
Villafuerte quoted the FNU as saying that “29,293 nursing graduates combined passed the last two Nursing Licensure Exams – 18,529 in November 2022 and 10,764 in May.”
He said the search for registered nurses and new board passers who are either without jobs yet or doing non-nursing work could be a priority of the National Nursing Advisory Council (NNAC).
“The DOH should also find out who among the almost 30,000 graduates who passed either of the two most recent Nurse Licensure Examination are not yet working,” he said.
