HEALTH-PHILIPPINES: Doctors Ditching Profession to be Nurses

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Diana Mendoza

MANILA, Jan 7 2005 (IPS) - ”Why can’t we be called heroes too?” Dr Ramon Santos (not his real name) asked, wondering why this label often used to describe Filipino overseas contract workers in Hong Kong and the Middle East are not being applied to doctors-turned-nurses like him. “They call us selfish, unpatriotic, greedy.”

Santos once headed the emergency medicine department of one of the first-rate hospitals outside the Philippine capital. In August 2004, he left for Canada, where he is now a nurse. “That’s one painful experience I’m trying to forget – my countrymen criticising me when all I want is a better life and a desire to help people,” he told IPS.

He is far from alone. In April 2004, a topnotcher in the medical board examination, Dr Emil Reyes Jacinto, took the same beating when he decided to become a nurse abroad instead of pursuing his medical career in the Philippines. Opinion writers called his decision a “sell-out.”

The Philippines, a country of 80 million people, is already the top supplier of nurses to different countries and is only next to India as a provider of doctors, according to the government agency in charge of deployment of overseas workers, the Philippine Overseas Employment Association (POEA).

Its 2002 data said that nearly 93 percent of nearly 13,000 medical professionals who left the country to work abroad were nurses. The agency has reported a rising trend since 1994.

Filipino nurses can be found in more than 30 countries and in 2004, most were deployed to countries like the United Kingdom, Kuwait, and the United States. Other countries that hire nurses from the Philippines range from Libya, the United Arab Emirates, Israel, Singapore, Taiwan and as far away as Palau, the Bahamas and Trinidad and Tobago.

On Dec. 11, 2004, the government-administered professional licensure examination for Filipino nurses counted at least 18,000 test takers, Although it could not determine how many of them already had medical degrees and were wanting to become nurses, one government physician interviewed by IPS said there were 450 doctors in his review class alone.

Dr Jaime Galvez-Tan, vice chancellor for research of the University of the Philippines Manila and executive director of the National Institutes of Health-Philippines, said that the demand for nurses has been consistently high in developed countries, where ageing populations require greater investments and services in health care.

Annually, he said, thousands of job opportunities attract Filipino nurses – highly competitive salary rates, attractive compensation and benefits, good living as well as working conditions. Processes to facilitate and accelerate recruitment and employment procedures have been also established by developed countries to sustain their public health systems.

“Filipino nurses are highly marketable and globally competitive,” he said in a paper written on the subject. “They have distinct advantage and better chances of employment abroad, given certain parallelisms in the health sciences curricula with that of the Northern countries’, complemented by rigorous training programmes.’’

Galvez-Tan, a one-time health secretary, said socio-cultural and economic factors, political instability, and poor working conditions in the country, coupled with the labour export policy of the Philippine government, encourage the exodus of these nurses.

“This phenomenon has never been a more alarming concern as it is today. Not only nurses are leaving the country, but also medical doctors shifting careers to become nurses,” he said.

When news about topnotch medical graduate Jacinto’s decision to shift to nursing hit the headlines last year, Department of Health Secretary Manuel Dayrit put on a brave front when confronted with insinuations that the public health system might be weakened further because doctors are leaving their posts.

“There are still many young people who want to serve their country as doctors and nurses, and the health services system is coping so far,” he said. He refrained from commenting about the increasing migration of doctors, saying that physicians have made their choices.

POEA reported at that time that estimated 4,000 doctors have already become nurses and this is a rapidly increasing number. The trend is reflected also in the increased nursing applications and enrolment. Schools offering the degree have also introduced special programmes for medical doctors.

Galvez-Tan said the Philippines will never be able to compete with the salary scales and better opportunities in the developed countries – but that this brain drain is something the government must not tolerate. “It is high time the present administration implement actions to address this health-threatening situation,” he said.

Meanwhile, Dr Santos is getting on with life in Canada. “There’s a lot to see, to eat and explore here,” he said.

(END/IPS/AP/HE/LB/DV/PR/DM/JS/05)