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.