Nursing Care

If nobody else, I can understand Philippine President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo’s decision to order a retake of the 2006 nursing examinations. National cost outweighs benefits, which of course is only spread to some thousands of individuals.

The test leakage had President Arroyo on an unenviable executive spot: Be just to a clear majority of examinees who had passed with nary a whiff of the leak, or risk having everyone of this year’s batch under a shadow--or worse, having the entire nursing licensure system under the shadow--internationally.

Meanwhile, the benefits would have covered Arroyo herself politically, she whose administration, day by day, has to pass scrutiny through a microscope. She chose to be an executive on the side of the long term on this one.

Was that the real cost-benefit equation? That’s where the debate is centered on now. Yes, the long term advantages or disadvantages are not all that clear, as they are all subject to conjecture.

Judgment call, they call it in sports. As it is, this turnaround caught many people by surprise. Nobody looks on this president, decidedly proportionally disadvantaged physically, to be any good at sports. But nobody has ever faulted her with not having a giant heart either.

But still, there’s no two ways about it, the passers (and their families of course) are the ones who suffer.

If there are people who should suffer more, it’d be those who had something to do with the leak. The national investigative bodies have reportedly zeroed in on review centers who got hold of those exams. Understandable enough, those people were the bribe givers.

But an even more powerful message sent across nations would have been to scuttle everyone in the nursing regulations commission. Commissioners, examiners, checkers, everyone on their respective staffs, the commission clerks—everyone. Those people were the bribe takers. They were the ones who had cast the entire nursing licensure system under that awful shadow. They were the custodians of that national resource who… botched the job, to say the least.

Every single one in that department is more guilty than any single board passer.

Either bar every one of the former from ever practicing his or profession, or have them do a retake, too.

We take care of our own nurses, hear?