Nurses fly fly away...
Please
click here for the source article: http://bulatlat.com/news/4-37/4-37-sick.html
Nursing is a profession within the health care sector focused on the care of
individuals, families, and communities so they may attain, maintain, or recover
optimal health and quality of life.. (Wikipedia). But how can they give quality health to the people if nurses only receive 8,000 per month?
With fewer jobs and less opportunities for nurses in the
Philippines, many nurses and nursing students have a desire to work overseas
where the salary is better and they feel compensated for their
hard work. Some nurses decide to move to Canada for work, while
others move to the United Kingdom, New Zealand, Australia, Middle East and
other European countries. A Filipino nurse working abroad is earning an average
of 200,000 per month compared to a Filipino nurse in the Philippines with just
8,000 per month.
I
have this friend of mine who passed the June-July 2012 NLE. I got the chance to
interview her because we attended the same training seminar. She told me her
experiences as an auxiliary nurse in SPMC. At that moment (October 2012), she
was employed for 3 weeks already. I asked her about the ward where she works
and the number of patients she caters. She told me that she was working in the
orthopedic (bones and muscles problems) ward where there are 200 patients and 4
nurses on duty. WOW! So the nurse to patient ratio is 1:50. I just cannot
imagine that you will do the documentation of the care done, administration of
medicine, monitoring of patients, taking the vital signs, regulating the
intravenous fluid on 50 patients in just 1 shift (8hours). And the climax of
our conversation was her salary. She has a GROSS salary of 8000 per month minus
the taxes, payables and deductions. The response that I gave her was just a
rolling eyeball. I was so lucky that I got the chance to take a second course
(Accountancy) or else, I will land on that situation too on which my monthly
allowance being a student is bigger than the salary that a nurse is receiving.
Could you just imagine that?
I
completely agree with the article (source link above). The migration of nurses
is a very big threat to the health care delivery system in the Philippines and
if the trend is not intervened, the system would definitely collapse. I too was
a victim of the sudden increase in the demand of nurses few years ago. My
parents forced me to take up nursing but at the time I graduated and eventually
passed the NLE, the demand suddenly dropped. Even doctors in the Philippines
take up nursing because of the lure of a very big salary abroad. This situation
is threatening since medical schools do not produce a big number of doctors. So
the problem here is nurses are going abroad and doctors take up nursing and
eventually go abroad. Who are left to care and cure our countrymen? The answer
would be fresh graduate/passers. With this trend, hospitals nowadays become the
training ground of nurses for them to earn the specified number of years of
experiences they need to be hired abroad.
Let
me tell you my recent experience. I was admitted last January 1, 2013 in a
hospital in my hometown. All the nurses who catered me are newly registered
nurse. When I was settled in my room, a nurse came in and did the skin test to
me. It was a test to determine if I am allergic to the antibiotic that was
prescribed to me. The procedure was completely wrong! The second time around (different
nurse), my antibiotic was 2 hours late. And my last encounter was the worst! I
woke up and saw my intravenous tubing ¾ filled with air because that 1000 mL
has already been infused. Completely consumed. I was shocked because if I
haven’t woke up and seen that situation, I might be waking up with a blood
transfusion. That’s what happens when the intravenous fluid in the bottle is
already consumed and not been replaced with a new one. I called the nurse and
she just changed my intravenous fluid without letting it drop because she told
that she will call someone else to handle the situation. In short, she does not
know what to do.
Nurses
that seek for a greener pasture serves as a very big challenge to the
government because they are the only one who can resolve this. In my point of
view, the only way to solve this problem is that the government must raise the
salary and give bonuses and incentives because low salary is the first and
foremost of reason why nurses go abroad. In line with raising the salary of the
nurses, they must also hire more nurses especially in the government hospitals
to lessen the nurse to patient ratio. Everyone has the right to receive the
best quality health care.
