Tuesday, August 08, 2006

depriving jobs

Leak scandal depriving 17,000 nursing board passers of jobs
St. Luke’s, PGH, others not hiring By Veronica Uy
INQ7.net
Last updated 06:54pm (Mla time) 08/08/2006

(UPDATE) MANY of the 17,000 nursing graduates who passed this year’s licensure examinations are having a hard time looking for jobs because of the failure of government to satisfactorily resolve the scandal triggered by the leak of the exam questions.

Marco Antonio Sto. Tomas, vice president of the Association of Deans of Philippine Colleges of Nursing, lashed out at the Professional Regulatory Commission for releasing the results of the June 11 to 12 licensure exams even before the leakage issue can be resolved.

“The 17,000 or so who passed are in a predicament. A lot of them nahihirapan mag-apply at kumuha ng trabaho (A lot of them are finding it hard to apply for an find jobs),” Sto. Tomas, who is also dean of the College of Nursing of the Saint Joseph's College in Cavite City, told a Senate hearing into the scandal Tuesday.

“The international community is now looking at how we are going to solve this problems because they (the reviewees) themselves are questioning the integrity of the exam,” Sto. Tomas added.

Teresita Barcelo of the University of the Philippines-Philippine General Hospital (PGH), confirmed Sto. Tomas’ statement, saying several medical institutions, including St. Lukes's, PGH, and the National Center for Mental Health are not hiring anyone from this batch of nominees.

“Sa abroad hindi pa, pero baka susunod na (Abroad, they haven’t stopped hiring yet, but it could follow),” she said.

During last weekend's CGFNS (Commission for Graduates of Foreign Nursing Schools) orientation here, Barcelo said the Americans repeatedly told the examinees, “You may fool Filipino examiners, but you cannot fool American examiners.”

Senator Richard Gordon noted that the health and safety of Filipino patients and the deployment of nurses abroad would be affected by the scandal.

“American hospitals, Japanese hospitals, European hospitals are watching us,” he said.

Gordon and Senator Rodolfo Biazon, head of the Senate committee on civil service and government reorganization, slammed the executive department for apparently preventing the official presence of the PRC, the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) and Commission on Higher Education (CHED) at the hearing.

Biazon noted that the letters sent by the three agencies explaining their refusal to appear before the inquiry appeared “to have been dictated” by one person as “even the location of (the) period” is the same.

Gordon lamented this, saying the executive department’s actions have been keeping the Senate from performing its duty. “We have a culture of cheating in this country. We have a tendency to want to beat the system, in the elections, in sports accreditations, and even in civil service exams,” he said.

Two members of the PRC Board of Nursing (BON) are facing administrative charges for the alleged leakage.

Despite the absence of PRC officials, PRC resolutions presented during the hearing identified the BON members as Anesia Dionisio and Virginia Madeja, who were both present at the hearing.

BON chair Eufremia Octaviano admitted that there was a leakage during the test.

The scandal stems from the complaint of examinee Rachel Cyndi-Erfe, who told the Senate that on both days of the exam, she saw other examinees wearing white jackets with R.A. Gapuz Review Center printed on the back reading photocopies of what she would later discover were leaked questions from the review center.

She has since been joined in her complaint by 91 other examinees and 425 intervenors.

Erfe’s lawyer, Cheryl Daytec-Yangot, said their own investigation showed that the leaked documents contained key words of the questions which came out in sets 3 and 5 of the licensure exam as well the answers.

She noted that the people who conducted the internal PRC fact-finding investigation and the subsequent NBI probe have not yet gotten in touch with the complainants.

Doctor Eleanor Artemia Gapuz, president and chief executive officer of the R.A. Gapuz Review Center, admitted that members of her staff reproduced the 18-page reviewer that Erfe saw a fellow examinee read prior to the actual test.

“We confirm that our staff with our students reproduced the manuscript after some of our students approached their drill master and asked permission to have them reproduced,” she said.

Senator Juan Flavier said he agreed with the proposal to have all the 42,000 examinees retake the licensure test.


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~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~Reply~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

This is discriminating!

The PRC has every right to release the June 2006 Board Exam Results because the nursing leakage scam has yet to be proven. There is no truth to all the allegations. Everyone who took the Nursing Licensure Board Exam is innocent until proven guilty.

There are already investigatory bodies doing their job. What else do they want? Who are the independent committee they want that will investigate this matter? Who are better people to investigate than the expert themselves?

There will always be people complaining. You can not please everyone. Just look at this, among the 42,006 applicants for the Nursing License, only 17,821 passed. Do you think that among the 24,185 applicants who failed none will complain? Gosh! There will always be complain whether there's a leak or none. This is not unusual.

There is no question to the integrity of the exam. So depriving us from getting a job is discriminating. It poses injustice on our part! They have removed test 5 (Nursing practice 5) from the computation which is the last exam and the one which i believe is the easier one among all five. The test 5, which they claim were leaked to them was already removed! It pulled down our grades! The one who got 83 could have made it 93 if it hadnt been removed. So many could have passed if they hadnt remove it!

There are many cumlaude and suma cumlaudes from different school failed in this exam. With this mortality on the laudes, there is still no need for retake! It also doesnt bring justice to proclaim that the results are inauthentic. It is authentic for it has been reviewed many times and those exams they claim (without enough proof) that has been leaked were already removed. And for them to plead to different hospitals not to hire NLE 06 passers is a sign of their frustration, insecurity and their being weaklings!


Foreign employers may be watching. Well ok if they watch! The NLE result is not the same exam that is taken abroad. If you want to be a US RN for example, then you have to take their exam- NCLEX-RN. We are BSN graduates and we can apply for that exam whether we took the NLE06 or not.

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