Nursing students should still retake exam

First posted 00:13am (Mla time)
Sept 16, 2006
By Rasheed Abou-AlsamhINQ7.net

MY column on the nursing board exam scandal two weeks ago (“Nursing exam results should be voided”) provoked many angry reactions from parents of Nursing students and from some exam takers themselves. All were upset that I was advocating that all the examinees retake parts III and V of the board exam, after it was discovered that answers to those two sections had been leaked to some students prior to the exam in June.

“Why should the innocent be punished for the actions of only a few?” demanded one of several similar emails sent to me. “We’ve spent so much time and money preparing for the exam, and having passed, we cannot afford to retake it.”

All are valid points, but as I have noted before, no one can ascertain for sure which review centers leaked the answers, or which students benefited from them. So it is only fair to have all the examinees retake those two portions of the exam again.

Already, patients in the Philippines have been asking nurses in hospitals if they are June 2006 exam passers, and if they are, they don’t want to be treated by them. This is exactly the type of damage to the reputation of nurses that I said before would arise if the stigma of cheating hung over the June exam takers.

This week, Executive Secretary Eduardo Ermita said some Professional Regulation Commission (PRC) examiners could have conspired with review centers in leaking the answers to students, and are being investigated.

In a welcome move, Ermita also announced Executive Order 566, which directs the Commission on Higher Education to regulate the establishment and operation of review centers, which have long been run by greedy businesspeople keen on raking in profits.

With some students reportedly paying up to P40,000 each to attend review sessions for the nursing board exam, one can only imagine the huge profits these centers are making.

Erlinda Castro-Palaganas, past Philippine Nurses Association governor for Region I and director of the Institute of Management at the University of the Philippines in Baguio City, wrote me a long letter of support, confirming everything I had said in my column.

The leader of the so-called Baguio Braves Alliance, whose leaders include those who exposed the leakage in the June 2006 local nursing board examination and nursing leaders, Castro-Palangas told me that the alliance denounced the way the reckless manner in which the PRC has handled the whole fraud scandal.

From trying to cover up the fraud, the PRC also insisted on conducting the investigation when it failed at covering up the cheating and prematurely released the result of the board exam. It also swiftly conducted an oath-taking of the board passers to overtake the action of the judicial branch.

Castro-Palangas wwrote: “Every move of the PRC gives rise to more problems. The current crop of Commissioners is obviously incompetent and without an iota of respect for the law. And yet, why do they behave with seeming impunity? Why do they stick to their positions like leeches? If they have any decency left in them, they should resign! The Philippine nursing profession’s image has been dented by the leakage issue and PRC’s actions have further battered it. The leakage is an eye-opener. It exposed the bitter truth that our government is groping in the dark in its handling of fraud. It tells us that cheating is endemic in our system. And it also shows the damage wrought by a commercialized and substandard nursing education.”