A total of 6,879 Filipino nursing graduates took the United States licensure tests for the first time from January to March 2024 with the hope of landing jobs in America, according to Quezon City Rep. Marvin Rillo, vice chairman of the House Committee on Higher and Technical Education.
“We expect a large number of Philippine nursing graduates to persist in pursuing their career aspirations in America and other foreign labor markets as long as we continue to underpay them here at home,” Rillo said in a statement issued on International Nurses Day.
The world celebrates the contributions of nurses to society every May 12 , birthday of Florence Nightingale, founder of modern nursing.
“Congress must substantially upgrade the starting base pay of our nurses now if we want to retain at least some of them for our public hospitals,” Rillo said.
In 2023, a record 36,410 nursing graduates from the Philippines took the U.S. licensure test for the first time, without counting repeaters.
Rillo has been batting for the passage of his bill that seeks to boost by 75 percent the starting base pay of public nurses.
Under Rillo’s House Bill No. 5276, the starting pay of government nurses would be raised to P63,997 per month from the current P36,619.
Senator Juan Edgardo Angara has also filed Senate Bill No. 638, which proposes to raise the entry-level pay of public nurses to P51,357 per month.
Based on previous reports, up to 4,500 items for nurses in public hospitals run by the Department of Health (DOH) remain unfilled owing to the lack of takers.
The World Health Organization (WHO), in its State of the World’s Nursing 2020 report, previously projected that “without action, there will be a shortfall of 4.6 million nurses worldwide by 2030.”
“The shortfall of nurses in the Philippines is expected to be 249,843 by 2030, unless greater investment is made now to retain them in the local health sector,” the WHO report said.