If you ask many nurses why they pursued the course, many of them would probably answer they would like to go to work abroad and to more. But if you ask them which country, the number of those who will reply “United States” may be fewer than before.
That’s because for the past the years, the number of Filipino nurses taking the US National Council Licensure Examination (NCLEX) has been declining, if that’s how we translate the number of examinees to the waning interest of coming to the United States.
Secretary-general Ernesto Herrera of the Trade Union Congress of the Philippines (TUCP) said only 15,382 took the US licensure exam for nurses in 2009. That’s down from 21,299 in 2007 and 20,764 in 2008. The decrease may be minimal but given the thousands of nursing graduates in those years, it’s indeed a good indicator that the interest to land a job in the United States is just not as high as before.
The number should not be interpreted that the number of Filipinos wanting to work abroad has declined as well. Perhaps nurses have found more lucrative places to work apart from the United States, where job qualification may now be more stringent and increased competition from nurses coming from nearby Latin American countries has increased. Not to mention the lingering unemployment market in the US does not make it an attractive place to go.
Also, the low passing rate in the recent nursing board exams manifests the need to upgrade nursing schools to provide competitive education to students.
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