CA asked to stop PRC from giving licenses to ’06 nurses

By Tetch Torres
INQ7.net
Last updated 08:45pm (Mla time) 09/25/2006

SEVERAL successful and unsuccessful examinees in the June 2006 Nursing Licensure exams banded together to ask the Court of Appeals to stop the Professional Regulation Commission (PRC) from issuing licenses to others who had passed the test.

At the same time, they asked the court to order the PRC to reschedule the taking of portions of Test 3 and the whole of 5, which were invalidated because of an alleged leakage.

In a 36-page Petition for Certiorari, Prohibition and Mandamus, seven board passers, 27 flunkers, deans from various nursing colleges, and professors from the University of the Philippines (UP) told the Appeals Court that Resolution 31, which was issued to invalidate the two tests and instead re-compute the rest of the results violated Republic Act 9173 or the Philippine Nursing Act of 2002 that provided requisites for admission to the Nursing Practice.

Resolution 31 invalidated parts of test 3 and the whole of 5 and recomputed the scores by getting the average from tests 1, 2, 4 and portions of 3, which the petitioners claimed had only pulled down further the scores of other examinees, causing some to even fail.

“Petitioners, particularly those who are on the failed list of the Respondents [PRC] believe that had Test 5 been not manipulated [by the formula stated under Resolution 31], their chance of successfully hurdling the examination would have been high.”

“What happened instead was because of the maneuverings of the Respondents, their competence for Test 5 was not adequately measured. Necessarily, they failed because their low scores on the other tests were inflicted again on them when their scores for Test 5 were computed on the basis of their grades in other subjects,” the petitioners added.

The petitioners also said that under RA 9173, examinees with an average rating of 75 percent but with a rating below 60 percent on any subject would be required to retake the exam.

“How did the Respondents [PRC] compute the scores of those examinees who took only Test 5, which is what they failed the last time?...From what source did they generate the scores of those who took removal examinations for Test 5 only?” the petitioners asked.

“There is thus no question that the formula is not a valid instrument to measure the competence of examinees for Test 5. The only recourse left for the Respondents, if they genuinely desire to maintain a reservoir of credible, world-class Philippine professionals, was to invalidate Test 5 and re-administer it. That they did not do so was in gross abnegation of their duties under the appropriate laws governing them, an evident grave abuse of discretion amounting to lack or excess of jurisdiction,” the petitioners said.

Aside from the 34 nursing graduates, other petitioners include Eastern College of Nursing; Ruth Tingda, Baguio Dean and Governor of the Cordillera Autonomous Region chapter of the Philippine Nursing Association (PNA); Grace Lacanaria, St. Louis University College of Nursing Dean; Marco Sto. Tomas, St. Joseph College of Nursing Dean and Vice-President of the Association of Deans of Philippine Colleges of Nursing; Erlinda Palaganas from UP-Baguio; Loreña Dao-Ayen, President of the PNA Baguio Chapter; and Dr. Teresita Barcelo, Cora Añonueva, Cecilia Laurente, and Fely Marilyn Lorenzo -- all professors of UP-Manila.
Last month, acting on a petition filed by Rene Luis Tadle, president of the College of Nursing Faculty Association, the Appeals Court ordered the PRC and the Board of Nursing to cease and desist from enforcing Resolution 31 and to also stop the oath-taking of those who passed the tests.