President orders nursing test retake

Manila Times

President Arroyo on Wednesday ordered a retake of the June 2006 Nursing Licensure Examination that was marred by a leakage.

Malacañang said the President ordered Labor Secretary Arturo Brion to supervise the retake. Brion was told to meet with Professional Regulation Commission officials to plan the retake.

Brion and the commission officials will decide whether to conduct a full or partial retake of the board examination. They will also determine if only the examinees who got the leaked questions from Tests 3 and 5 should retake the examinations.

The idea of the retake was suggested to the President at a Cabinet meeting on Tuesday.

Executive Secretary Eduardo Ermita said the President ordered the retake to protect the integrity of the nursing profession and the conduct of licensure examinations in the country.

Malacañang said Executive Order 565, signed by President Arroyo earlier this month, attached the Professional Regulation Commission to the Department of Labor and Employment for general direction and coordination.

Ermita said the commission was removed from the Office of the President because Mrs. Arroyo believed the labor department was in a better position to oversee the commission.

Under Section 2 (1), Chapter 1, title VII, Book III of Executive 292, or the Administrative Code of 1987, the President can bestow on the labor department the power to optimize the development and use of the country’s manpower resources.

The transfer “was brought about by the recently leaked examination for nurses, and the leakage has affected the status of our nursing course, making even our hospitals wary of admitting the recent examinees because the integrity of the examination has suffered,” Ermita said.

Even the image of Filipino nurses abroad, he added, has been tarnished by the leakage.

Ermita also confirmed reports that the President had approved the recommendations submitted by Dr. Dante Ang, chairman of the Commission on Filipinos Overseas, for the nurses who took the recent licensure examinations to retake them.

The President’s directive was confirmed by Secretary Brion.

In an interview with The Manila Times, Brion said Mrs. Arroyo instructed him to place the commission house in order at the soonest possible time and submit a report and recommendations on vital matters relating to board examinations, specifically on the recent nursing exam.

“The commission’s work is not a regular function of the DOLE. It is important that I should meet first with the commission people so that we will have a good relation right from the start,” Brion said.

Earlier, Labor Undersecretary Luzviminda Padilla disclosed that Brion had mentioned a Malacañang study to place the commission under the labor department.

“This is an additional work for the department. It is a job we are not familiar with,” Padilla said.
At least two members of the commission nursing board are being investigated for possible involvement in the leakage.

Ang said he is pushing for a retest because he wants justice not only for the nursing graduates who took the exam but for hospitals and patients that would suffer from anomalies in the future.

“The issue here is not whether these 17,821 nursing board passers really passed or whether the board cleared the test papers. At issue is the question of competence, as well as the trust and confidence in the Filipino nurses,” Ang said.

He said he did not want the US authorities in charge of the National Council Licensure Examination to doubt the capability of the nursing board examiners to organize the tests.

In his report to the President, Ang noted that the level of competence of the nursing examiners has dropped because the regulation commission lowered its passing mark.

He said the commission recomputed the items in Tests 3 and 5 using a different formula, which makes it more unacceptable to recognize the passers without questioning their integrity.

In a Senate hearing on the labor department’s 2007 budget, Brion said his department will consider the results of the investigation into the leakage of the regulation commission, the National Bureau of Investigation and the Senate.

Sen. Franklin Drilon, chairman of the Senate Committee on Finance hearing the labor department’s budget, said that the department during the hearing expressed doubt if it could exercise properly its oversight function over the commission.

“That is their concern, principally. Given the autonomy enjoyed by the commission and its boards, the Department of Labor will have the responsibility without the appropriate authority.

Certainly, that is a cause for concern. So that you will be made responsible for the performance of the commission, but your authority to supervise would be very limited because the commission and the various boards are independent entities,” Drilon said.