4 top nursing schools defend filing of motion

By Christian V. EsguerraInquirer
First posted 02:59am
(Mla time) Oct 18, 2006

Editor's Note: Published on Page A1 of the October 18, 2006 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer

IS ANYONE playing the spoiler’s role in the nursing leakage controversy?

A professor at the University of Santo Tomas College of Nursing yesterday said the school and three other leading nursing schools were well within their rights in filing a motion for reconsideration.

Prof. Zenaida Famorca was referring to the motion filed with the Court of Appeals by UST, along with nurses from the University of the Philippines (UP), University of the East (UE) and the Far Eastern University (FEU).

Nursing board passers and their parents are considering filing a damage suit against the petitioners who opposed the appellate court’s decision.

The motion, which said the court’s order for a selective retake of the June 2006 licensure exam failed to put the issue to rest, was seen by some quarters as further prolonging the agony of “passers” awaiting their oath and license.

“No, we’re not playing the spoiler’s role here,” Famorca told the Inquirer. “We’re not trying to delay the oath-taking.”

“There are nurses and parents who are currently discussing the possible filing of a damage suit.

For me, I will support that because what they are doing is too much already. They are causing us, the innocent examinees, too much agony,” said 10th-placer Chulou Penales.

Penales, who heads the Tapoktapok sa Nagkahiusang Nurses Batok sa Retake, said her group could not understand why the petitioners continued to pursue a retake for all when even the National Bureau of Investigation found that the leak was limited to Manila and Baguio City.

The Court of Appeals on Friday ruled that those who passed the board exam conducted outside of Manila and Baguio and those who had registered for but did not attend the “final coaching” sessions at three review centers found to have leaked test questions could take their oath as nurses.

On Monday, however, Labor Secretary Arturo Brion directed the Professional Regulation Commission (PRC) to desist from administering the oath and from issuing licenses to board passers cleared by the Court of Appeals.

Brion said he stopped the PRC from administering the oath because the court’s ruling could still be reversed.

He said the petitioners were still entitled to file a motion for reconsideration, which UST and the others did the other day.

Clarification

Famorca said the petitioners did not even ask for a temporary restraining order. Instead, UST and the other groups merely sought a clarification of the court ruling, including the one covering those who would have to retake Tests III (medical-surgical nursing) and V (psychiatric nursing).

She said the UST College of Nursing was concerned about how the 1,687 examinees ordered to take the tests again were identified. The PRC added the names of these examinees to the list of board passers following a recomputation of test scores.

“We want clarification because we don’t even know how the PRC came up with these names,” the UST professor said.

Asked about the possibility of the UST group bringing the case all the way to the Supreme Court, she said: “It depends on what the court would say about the petition.”

Even if the motion was not filed, Famorca said the court ruling was not yet final and executory. “The parties would still have to wait for at least 15 days even if we didn’t file the motion for reconsideration,” she said.

Heart of problem

In a joint statement yesterday, nurses from UST, UP, UE and FEU said the PRC officials should be “prudent enough to respect our right to file a motion for reconsideration.”

The group said the appellate court’s ruling failed to address the heart of the problem, which was “the fact that [the] leakage occurred.”

“This fact was not disputed by the court, yet this was not addressed,” it said.

“By simply nullifying Resolution No. 31 and not causing a retake by all of Tests III and V, the leaked questions were in essence declared valid and those who passed yet cheated were treated similarly as those who passed yet did not cheat.”

Resolution No. 31 invalidated 20 of the 100 questions in Test III while ordering a recomputation of Test V.

“If the effect of the leakage remained in the (nursing licensure exam), the integrity and credibility of the examination remains in question,” it said.

Testimony, core issues

UST and the other nursing schools maintained that the cheating was not limited to Manila and Baguio.

“Vital testimony of examinee Dennis Bautista attesting to a satellite feed from Manila to Cebu and Davao was ignored by the NBI and, therefore, was not considered by the Court of Appeals in deciding this case,” the petitioners argued.

“We all want to bring the leakage issue to closure, and we were hoping that the CA decision will do this. It appears that, rather than resolving the issue, the CA decision raised questions that need reconsideration and clarification.”

The Court of Appeals decision on the selective retake of the nursing board exam would not provide closure to the controversy, a militant group of health workers said.

“Core issues, such as the integrity and competence of our nurses, as well as the commercialism and profiteering that have characterized nursing education, remain loose ends that will continue to be contentious,” the Health Alliance for Democracy (HEAD) said in a statement.

Abolish board

To help restore the nursing profession’s credibility, Pasig City Representative Robert “Dodot” Jaworski Jr. urged Malacañang to certify as urgent a bill calling for the abolition of the Board of Nursing, which has been blamed for the exam leakage.

Acting PRC director for Central Visayas Dan Malaya said some 100 Cebuano board passers could be among the 1,687 who were ordered to retake the tests in December. More than 1,500 of the 1,723 passers from Cebu had taken their oaths, according to Malaya.

In Tacloban City, PRC regional director German Palabyab said his office could not schedule an oath-taking for the 143 nursing graduates in Eastern Visayas who passed the board exam because of the Malacañang decision.

With reports from Alcuin Papa and Philip C. Tubeza in Manila; and Jhunnex Napallacan, Jolene R. Bulambot and Joey A. Gabieta, Inquirer Visayas