Nursing rollercoaster

The results of the Philippine nursing licensure exams are out. Today.

Before you jump to any conclusions, no, I was not one of the nearly 80,000 who took the test. I haven't even graduated yet. However, a couple of my friends in the school paper were June takers and I am as excited as they are about the results.

No one told me the results were out today. I don't even have a damn cell phone so even a simple text message informing me about the NLE results was out of the picture. It was just a whim, I guess, since every few days I would casually scan the net to see if the June 2007 results were posted. It was necessary that I know since we were supposed to post the results at the school paper as well.

So when I searched the net, lo and behold, only 48% passed. My eyes almost fell from my sockets (okay, so that was an exaggeration, but I was still stunned with how low the national passing rate was). I mean, below 50% ? Really, was the performance of the June 2007 takers that dismal?

I can only click my tongue. It was disappointing. The national passing rate has been slipping each year and this is probably one of the lowest it has ever been. What does it imply to the rest of the world? Only one thing: we are churning less competent nurses. Because of the high demand and the endless sprouting of diploma mill nursing schools, the Philippines is left with half-baked, half-decent student nurses. It's rather ironic. We are the biggest supplier of nurses in the WORLD and yet, as time goes on, our professional "exports" are becoming less and less globally competitive and competent.

I snort whenever I hear nursing students in my college complain how hard nursing is. I find their complaints pathetic. If they already think nursing is hard, they should try engineering, computer science, law or medicine. Nursing isn't even half as bad as they make it appear to be. You hardly do any analysis. Just memorization. And the things you memorize aren't even as many or as intensive as when you take physical therapy or medicine. Nursing isn't taxing mentally, but it is physically demanding, as duties and requirements take long hours. But hey, almost all college courses make you study until the wee hours of the morning anyway. I honestly believe that many student nurses out there are not suitable nurses. I'm not saying that I am better than them, but they hardly put any effort in their studies nor do they even bother doing extra effort caring for their patients. No wonder the nursing quality in the Philippines is on the decline. So many people are taking it and yet they aren't truly meant for the said profession.

Whatever. It's not like it's going to stop hordes of people from taking up nursing anyway. Because for many people, nursing is not about caring for other people anymore. It's about going abroad and earning dollars. We have to be practical. These are hard times after all.

As for me, I'm going to probably spend the next two hours trying to open the website holding the results of NLE June 2007 while amusing myself with The Da Vinci Code on HBO.

Yay for cable!