Salary hike alone won't address nursing shortage: CHED
Shortage of nurses in the country will not be addressed by just increasing their salary, Commission on Higher Education (CHEd) Chairperson Prospero De Vera III said on Tuesday.
"It's not either you have to raise the salaries to solve the problem. The strategy should be multiple solutions that we are providing," he said in a Palace press briefing.
"While there’s an effort to look into increasing salaries, there should also be an effort to produce more graduates at the same time; and there should also be an effort to reskill the existing ones and see how many of those who fail the licensure test can be assisted to pass it," he added.
Health Secretary Ted Herbosa earlier said: "We have a situation. I can’t call it a crisis but I see that it will become a crisis if we don’t solve it... In a few more years, if we don’t do anything, we will run out of nurses."
Herbosa pointed out there are 4,500 vacant plantilla items for nurses in the 72 Department of Health hospitals nationwide.
During a sectoral meeting with President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., De Vera presented the "long-term, medium-term and immediate actions that can be done to address the nursing shortage" in the country.
He said long-term action includes the lifting of "the ten-year moratorium on the creation of new nursing programs."
"There are 54 universities that applied to open nursing programs, and our estimate is that these 54 universities, once approved, can produce about 252 students by the academic year 2027-2028," said De Vera.
"That’s the long-term. You lift the nursing moratorium so you will have more schools that will offer nursing programs and produce more graduates. But we don’t have to wait for five, six years to produce more," he added.
Medium term programs includes the creation of health care assistants and health care associates by working with the Technical Education and Skills Development Authority (TESDA).
"We are working with the Private Sector Advisory Council in the Department of Health to identify tasks that nurses should not be doing anymore so they can focus on patient care. For example, the regular blood pressure and temperature testing, those skills will be produced by a shorter program to produce what we call health care associates and health care assistants," said De Vera.
"This can be a certificate or diploma program issued by TESDA or CHEd or by both so that we produce ? you don’t have to wait for five years to produce it; you can produce it within a year or two years ? so we will have supplemental workforce to address the needs of our hospitals. That’s the medium-term," he added.
De Vera said the medium-term also includes the development of "a fast-track mastes' program because what we saw is that many of the schools cannot open a lot of sections because they lack teachers with master’s degrees. A lot of the nursing faculty with master’s degrees are also being recruited by other countries."
"So we are producing a short-term fast-track master’s program to produce more teachers so that the schools can have more classes. So that’s the medium-term," he said.
As part of the immediate action, the CHED is working with the Department of Health and the private hospitals and the universities that have a very good track record in having review classes to help the graduates to pass the nursing licensure examination.
"We will hold special review classes for those employed in the DOH and in private hospitals as aides or assistants so that they can pass the licensure test and we can produce more graduates," he said.
De Vera explained that those who did not pass the licensure exam "will not necessarily be health care assistants" but the government will help them become nurses by helping them review for the licensure test as the first intervention".
"We will give grants to the universities; the private hospital said they will send and pay for their employees who did not pass the licensure so they can pass ? so that’s the first track," he said.
"The other one is possibly re-skill them to become support services in the hospital ? that’s already happening in many hospitals now, they have jobs that are not nurses because they did not pass the licensure. So, we don’t have to wait a long time… the review class can start any time because we already have an agreement with the Department of Health and some private hospitals to do this," he added. Robina Asido/DMS
