It’s now nurse vs nurse in leak

First posted 02:20am (Mla time)
Oct 22, 2006
By Norman Bordadora, Gil C. Cabacungan Jr.
Inquirer

Editor's Note: Published on page A3 of the October 22, 2006 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer

THE nursing exam fiasco, marred by months of official flip-flopping on whether or not the leakage-tainted exam should be retaken, is now mirrored in a fight between nursing student factions—those who want to take their oath and those who want to retake the exam.

Renato Aquino, president of the Alliance of New Nurses, said they would file damage suits against those who filed an injunction against their oath-taking.

Aquino said their group was coordinating with “pro bono” lawyers to take on their case against Rene Luis Tadle, president of the University of Sto. Tomas, College of Nursing; Earl Francis Sumile, president of the League of Concerned Nurses, and Michael Angelo Brant, president of Binuklod na Samahan ng mga Student Nurses. These three groups filed for an injunction against the oath-taking of those who passed the June 2006 nursing board examinations.

The recriminations erupted after the Court of Appeals decided last week to finally allow all those who passed the nursing board exam, except in Baguio and Manila where the examination leakage were reported, to take their professional oath.

Aquino argued that those who had satisfactory scores in the leakage-marred exams had “had bouts of depression and sleepless nights as a result of the continued delay in their getting their nursing licenses.”

“We want them to suffer what we have suffered for the last four months,” Aquino said at the weekly Kapihan sa Sulo news forum.

Aquino said they were also considering the inclusion in the damage suit of presidential adviser on overseas employment Dante Ang, who wanted a total retake of the nursing board exam, and Labor Secretary Arturo Brion, who postponed the oath-taking pending a decision on various motions for reconsideration and further investigation of the alleged cheating.

Justice Secretary Raul Gonzalez, meanwhile, said the government “has no recourse but to administer the oath-taking of nursing students who passed once the Court of Appeals decision takes effect on Oct. 28.

Gonzalez sided with those impatient to take their oaths: “There is no point in delaying the oath-taking because the Professional Regulation Commission could just as easily revoke or withdraw the licenses of those nurses that would later be found to have cheated in the nursing exams.”
But Brion stood pat on his position not to allow any oath-taking until all those who had benefited from the leakage had been identified.

The CA has so far identified 1,687 examinees out of the 17,821 who passed the examinations to undergo a retake of Tests III (medical-surgical nursing) and V (psychiatric nursing). Brion argued that a motion filed with the CA by the University of Santo Tomas, University of the Philippines, University of the East and the Far Eastern University could have an impact on the CA decision issued on Oct. 13.

In a statement, Brion appealed to nursing board examinees to “be patient for the sake of the integrity of our professional exams.”

But Gonzalez countered: “His (Brion’s) position has always been extreme, he was always for a retake and we had clashed in the Cabinet over that. I said that the nurses are more victims than culprits and that the real culprits are the nursing board examiners. My position is exactly what the CA did on all four counts,” Gonzalez said. With reports from Nestor P. Burgos, Inquirer Visayas, and Jerome Aning