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Nursing is in the heart
Florence Nightingale (1820-1910), the nursing icon of the human race must be turning in her grave as the profession she so nobly practiced is turning out to be just a cash cow for many Filipinos.
Florence attended to the sick, wounded and despondent with nothing but an oil lamp and tender loving care. Florence received very little compensation because to her nursing is an act of pure service. Little did she know that a century later many would be enticed to take after her steps not because they share her messianic view of her profession but because of the lure of greener pastures, a 5-bedroom white picket-fenced suburban American home and a Lexus, as a second car to a Jaguar.
Today, nursing is a quick fix to poverty and the practical way to a comfortable life ahead. That’s why many Filipinos invest on a nursing course to get ahead—- materially. And there’s nothing wrong with that or aspiring for any other high-paying dream. It is just unfortunate that money is the only thing that motivates many nursing students today. They pay tuition to nursing schools as though they’re investing on a dollar bond instrument. It is also an investment not just for the nurse but the entire family, opening doors for sending brothers and sisters to school or helping aging parents financially.
Schools have also become more entrepreneurial as they offer nursing courses or open nursing departments in their colleges even if they do not have facilities or the faculty qualified and dedicated to handle nursing subjects. Many colleges have only taken advantage of the increasing number of Nightingale wannabe’s milking them while they last. Nursing students now stay schooled for an average of 5 years and after graduation, they go to review schools prior to the board exam and again invest on refreshers. And like nursing schools, many of these review centers have dubious track records.
That’s why it is no surprise that the latest nurse’s board examination showed a dismal passing average of 39.72%, as only 37,527 passed, of the total 94,462 board takers.
The Commission on Higher Education (CHED) is starting a crackdown on schools that cannot offer quality nursing education, based on their passing average in the nurse’s board exam. These schools will be closed down.
CHED also notes many nursing colleges that cannot give students enough hospital exposure for a nursing student’s much-needed hands on experience.
This perhaps is a greater irony for as a third world country our public hospitals are bursting at the seams with sick people and there has been a shortage of nurses and health workers in many district infirmaries nationwide. It is rather unimaginable that nursing students are not able to take advantage of these opportunities to serve the country while honing their tender loving care skills.
The Board of Nurses also blames repeaters, or those who failed in previous nurse’s board examinations and took the latest one, for the staggering failure rate. But is the exponentially growing number of repeaters only a sign of a much bigger failure in the nurse’s board exam preparations? Are they the sum of all bad practices, academic shortcomings and commercialization of nursing?
Meantime as schools, reviewer centers, the curriculum and lack of teaching personnel and school facilities are being blamed for the lackluster quality of nursing graduates in the country, is anyone looking at the kind of students that take up nursing? Are they nurse-material?
A lot of students take up nursing for the wrong reasons. Nursing is not just a job— it is a profession of service, caring, commitment and dedication. For one to become a good nurse the will to serve must be in the heart, and a good life or material bliss may only be the perks of a job made easier because it is what one has set out to do in life.
If one does not love nursing and everything the profession stands for, then he must brace himself for a life of sheer hard hospital labor.
And hell begins with hurdling that board exam.
