Palace sacks all Board of Nursing members

First posted 02:18am (Mla time) Nov 01, 2006
By Juliet Labog-Javellana, Jerome Aning
Inquirer

Editor's Note: Published on Page A1 of the November 1, 2006 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer

ALL THE MEMBERS of the Professional Regulation Commission’s Board of Nursing (BON) have been replaced by President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo in an effort to banish any cloud of doubt on the integrity of the next nursing licensure examination scheduled in December.

“The entire Board of Nursing has been removed; the President accepted their resignations,” Executive Secretary Eduardo Ermita announced at his weekly briefing yesterday.

“We’d like to see the problem of the nursing licensure exam come to an end because the next [regular] exam to be administered will be on Dec. 2 and 3, which is barely two months away,” Ermita said.

It is the seven-member BON which prepares the questions for the board exam administered by the PRC. The latest test, held in June, was marred by a leak of test questions that tainted not only the exam but the entire Philippine nursing profession as well.

Ermita said the President signed the appointment papers of five new BON members on Oct. 27 before she left for an official visit to China. He said Malacañang was awaiting recommendations from the Department of Labor and Employment (DoLE) and PRC for the two other nominees.

Carmencita M. Abaquin will now serve as acting board chair, and Leonila A. Faire, Betty F. Merritt, Perla G. Po and Marco Antonio C. Sto. Tomas as acting members.

They replaced BON chair Eufemia Octaviano and members Remedios Fernandez, Letty G. Kuan, Estelita Galutira, Anesia Dionisio and Virginia Madeja, whose resignations were accepted by Ms Arroyo. The seventh slot, which has long been vacant, will be filled along with the sixth.

Dionisio and Madeja were earlier slapped with administrative and criminal charges for purportedly leaking the questions they prepared to examinees in the cities of Manila and Baguio.

All deserving

Nursing educators lauded the appointment of the new BON members.

“They are all deserving and are highly recommended,” said Carmencita Divinagracia, president of the Association of Deans of the Philippine Colleges of Nursing and dean of the University of the East-Ramon Magsaysay College of Nursing.

“We have no doubt as to their integrity and competence in terms of their knowledge of the BSN (Bachelor of Science in Nursing) curriculum,” she said in a phone interview.

Divinagracia also said the new BON members would ensure against leaks in future nursing board exams.

“We agree that they will safeguard very well the tests that will be administered by them, and work for the implementation of the proper test framework, which is competency-based,” she said, pointing out that the BON had “deviated from this framework in the past.”

Fely Marilyn Lorenzo, director of the University of Manila-Institute of Health Policy and Development, said the nursing education sector supported the new board.

Lorenzo described the new appointees as “outstanding and upright nurses.”

“We are confident they can redeem the [licensing] process in nursing if they put their minds to it,” she said, adding:

“It’s the PRC that still needs to be revamped.”

The PRC is chaired by Leonor Tripon Rosero, the President’s personal dentist.

Far from over

Ermita said Malacañang also wanted the National Bureau of Investigation to complete its inquiry into who among the examinees had benefited from the leak believed to have been disseminated in at least three review centers.

He said the NBI had yet to submit its report.

But Labor Secretary Arturo Brion said the controversy could continue to simmer with the failure of the conciliation talks hosted by the Court of Appeals.

“It’s far from over; it’s still with the courts and, like I said in the beginning, the judicial process will not end until the Supreme Court decides on it,” he said.

The appellate court had allowed the oath-taking of the June board passers in batches, but said that those who would later be found to have cheated could still have their licenses revoked. Oath-taking ceremonies have been going on at the PRC since Friday.

The court had also invalidated the PRC re-computation of the grades and ordered a retake for some 1,687 who passed because of the re-computation.

But a group from the University of Santo Tomas College of Nursing, seeking a total retake of the exam, had asked the court to stop the oath-taking.

The conciliation talks, which Brion had suggested to the appellate court, were intended to resolve the conflict.

Aberrations

Brion also said his office was looking into what he called “aberrations” in the PRC list of passers.

The investigation stemmed from a complaint filed with the DoLE by 20 examinees complaining of purported discrepancies in the computation of their grades, Brion said at a press briefing.

He said the PRC’s final list of passers may not entirely be accurate because of differences in the original, recomputed and final grades.

“This was the reason we were hesitant to endorse the oath-taking,” said Brion, who had originally wanted all passers to retake Tests III and V (the questionable portions of the exam).

Brion said the DoLE had been studying the differences among the PRC’s master, retake and “deemed passed” lists.

The master list contains the original grades of all the examinees in each of the five parts of the exam.

The retake list is what the PRC issued after re-computing the passers’ grades following the discovery of the leak.

The PRC released the “deemed passed list” following the issuance of the appellate court’s ruling on the matter.

According to Brion, in some cases many examinees who failed under the first list had one to eight points added to their grades in the third list and were thus able to pass and take their oath.

“The differences are very disturbing,” he said, adding that he had asked the PRC to explain the discrepancies.

Brion said the DoLE was also looking into the case of 1,887 examinees who failed under the master list but passed when the grades were recomputed.

He said he had found errors in the re-computation.

Probe results on Nov. 6

Brion said he and his staff had been comparing the lists and would obtain samples “sufficient for us to draw conclusions from.”

He said the results of the investigation would be turned over to the “proper forum” on Nov. 6.

He also said he was prepared to face the motion for indirect contempt that a nursing group, citing his objection to the oath-taking, had filed against him before the appellate court.

“It’s a misreading of the law [on their part], considering that I wasn’t a party to the case at all and that a party must first ask the court for leave before filing any pleading,” he said.

Brion, who was a Court of Appeals justice prior to his appointment as labor secretary, said he would respond to the petition only if ordered by the court to do so.

He said he would withhold further comment because of the sub judice principle and “to avoid further inflaming emotions.”

Suffering

In another twist to the controversy, 24 exam passers and their parents have lodged a civil suit at the Quezon City Hall of Justice against three group leaders seeking a general retake.

The complainants sought P30,000 each in moral and exemplary damages for the suffering purportedly caused by the delay in their oath-taking.

Those charged were Rene Luis Tadle, Earl Francis Sumile and Michael Angelo Brant, presidents of the UST College of Nursing Faculty Association, the League of Concerned Nurses and the Binuklod na Samahan ng mga Student Nurses, respectively.

Tadle et al. had asked the appellate court to order a general retake to preserve the exam’s integrity. But the court denied the petition and ordered the oath-taking to proceed, excluding 1,687 examinees who had benefited from the leak and who were ordered by the court to retake Tests III and V.

The three subsequently sought the court’s reconsideration.

But the complainants said Tadle et al. were making it appear that a great number of people shared their sentiments when “in fact, they are just three individual petitioners, two of whom are not even registered nurses.” With reports from Alcuin Papa and DJ Yap