UST nursing college an exemplar

By Grace R. Mercado
Manila Times

Eleven thousand applicants, 650 accepted. A 10-year average of more than 90 percent passing rate in the nursing licensure examination. Awar­ded Center of Excellence in Nursing Education by the Commission on Higher Education. Granted Level 2 accreditation by the Philippine Association of Colleges and Universities Commission on Accreditation. Part of a university that recently received the Philippine Quality Awards in Recognition of Proficiency in Quality Management (Level 2) by the Department of Trade and Industry.

This is the College of Nursing of the University of Santo Tomas.

Celebrating its 60th anniversary this year, the College of Nursing of UST has always been a bastion of quality nursing education in the country. Its graduates have enjoyed success while maintaining and living Thomasian values of competence, compassion and commitment in various positions they hold. It could be in hospitals here and abroad, in private and government institutions, in academe and the business sector.

While other universities and nursing schools have been aggressive in their expansion, the UST college has always maintained its class number. Only recently has it expanded from an average of eight sections to ten from the second to the fourth year.

“Expanding is not merely a question of adding classrooms or buying more computers. It is a question of ensuring that the students will be properly mentored. We want to maintain an ideal teacher to student ratio in the college, and by teachers I don’t just mean any teacher, but highly qualified experienced nursing professionals in their field of practice,” explained Prof. Glenda Vargas, dean of the college.

Within the university the college has always been described as reserved, preoccupied with the daily grind of the classroom and hospital duties, often even failing to attend to university affairs to catch up on the lectures. The college is a community within what is usually described a “conservative” university. On the other hand, the college, particularly the faculty members, has always been seen as a unified force; it has always acted and voted as one in both university and faculty issues.

The recent licensure leakage scandal and, before it, the resignation of the CHED Technical Committee on Nursing Education that rocked the nursing profession sounded like an ambulance siren in the collective consciousness of the college, particularly of the faculty. These have awakened an otherwise docile institution, making it “sleeping giant” no more. Wishing to shed light on the issue, the officers of the Faculty Association of the college have sought an audience with the Association of Deans of Philippine Colleges of Nursing and written to the Board of Nursing and the Philippine Regulation Commission. But as more information came in, the more it became clear that the solutions put forward by the nursing leaders and the commission only further put in doubt the integrity of the licensure examination.

Much has been said of the technical details of the issue; in fact, a case filed by the colleges’ Faculty Association is pending at the Court of Appeals. Suffice it to say that as a community of Catholic teachers, the college, true to its Dominican roots, stands for the truth and the genuine effort to search for the truth. As a community of mentors of future nursing professionals and leaders, the college, its faculty members in particular, cannot simply go back to the classroom as if all is well, because all isn’t well.

How do you continue teaching new nurses when the regulation commission can simply decide that retaking the board examination is optional? How do you continue to motivate the students to be at their best, when some self-styled nursing leaders argue that the new nurses “will be trained in the hospital anyway and that is where they would prove their competence?” This issue is indeed beyond the “retake-no retake” conflict.

This is about nursing education, and the deplorable state some government agencies and moneyed interests allow it to be. This issue is beyond the Class of 2006. This is an issue for all current and future nursing students. This is not only about the here and now, but more so the future. And it is because of this future that the University of Santo Tomas College of Nursing, drawing strength and inspiration from its storied history and tradition, its commitment to excellence and the pursuit of the truth, has taken a stand.

This issue simply hits home.