Australia sees low nurse demand

By Malou M. Mozo
Filipino nurses eyeing job opportunities in Australia will have to wait for at least two years as the Australian government announced it will hold off applications for foreign nurses beginning this year until 2013.

Austrialian Ambassador to the Philippines Rod Smith explained that this was due to a consolidation movement of Australia’s public healthcare sector.

“From now until 2013 there will be no significant demand for nurses outside of Australia,” he made this announcement during his recent visit to Cebu.

At present, Smith estimated some 250,000 Filipinos working and residing in Australia, majority of them working as nurses or other medical professions.

He failed to clarify, though, whether the employment status of Filipino nurses in Australia will be affected by the ongoing consolidation in their public health sector.

However, Smith said that employment demand for accountants, engineers, IT (Information Technology) experts in Australia will continue to grow over the next few years.

Earlier, Leah Samaco-Paquiz, Philippine Nursing Association president noted a plateau in the demand for Filipino nurses abroad including the United States (US) and Australia citing weakening demand from US employers and the issue on visa retrogression.

She said many nurses are now underemployed or unemployed as a result of changes of policy in destination countries, the current situation of oversupply and quality problems, among others.

The Department of Labor and Employment (DoLE) likewise admitted that the US has indeed placed a cap on the entry of Filipino nurses but encouraged Filipinos to venture into new markets.

DoLE said that Saudi Arabia alone is in need of 10,000 nurses for their public hospitals and are specifically eyeing Filipino nurses to fill the vacancies.

Likewise, under the new ASEAN-Australia-New Zealand Free Trade Agreement (AANZFTA) which was signed in January last year, New Zealand will allow up to 100 Philippine nurses to work there as registered nurses at any one time for a period of three years.

Nurses will be given working visas even while they are undergoing the required bridging courses and examinations.

Hospital condemned for discriminating vs Pinoy nurses

By Henni Espinosa – ABS-CBN North America Bureau
Filipino nurses, advocates and community groups flocked to the headquarters of the California Pacific Medical Center (CPMC) Wednesday to condemn the hospital chain for discriminating against Filipinos.

“We are here because we are concerned for the Filipino nurses. We have been advocates for the Filipino nurses for many years,” said Lilian Galedo, Executive Director of Filipino Advocates for Justice.

Last August, the California Nurses Association (CNA) filed a class action grievance against CPMC after some former nurse managers complained that they were told not to hire Filipino nurses because “they’re hard to understand.”

CNA cited that in 2008, Filipinos comprised 48% of new hires among nurses at St. Luke’s, one of CPMC’s hospitals. The union said that number decreased to 10% today.

Filipino nurse Ron Villanueva was up for promotion when he said he heard the Vice President for Nursing say that she should stop hiring foreign graduates.

Villanueva said, “I didn’t prod or anything. The mere fact that she said, I was already discouraged. What was the point of me applying?”

Two months after the Filipino nurses and CNA filed a class action grievance, CPMC management agreed to meet with Filipino community leaders, except for complainants like Villanueva.

“That just means they’re really guilty of discrimination. Why can’t they face me and others who personally witnessed what they said against us Filipinos?” he asked.

Terry Valen, Executive Director of the Filipino Community Center, said CPMC’s management denied that discrimination ever took place.

“They told us that they have conducted an internal investigation on this. And we have yet to see the results of that investigation,” Valen said.

Filipino nurse Marilen Logan was also present at the meeting. She said there is no truth to claims of some of her kababayans that CPMC discriminates against Filipinos.

“When I heard about this, I thought it was a joke that came from the rumor mill. People at CPMC hire a lot of Filipino nurses. I just don’t see what they’re saying.”

But protesters stood by their word that CPMC targets Filipino nurses. Community leaders said that unless CPMC corrects this, they will support the Filipino nurses in filing a class action lawsuit against the hospital chain.

Jane Sandoval, a nurse at St. Luke’s Hospital for 25 years and a union leader said, “This is not just a fight for Filipino nurses. This is a fight against discrimination. Whoever feels abused, we will make sure to back them up.”

US labor market tough for Filipino Nurses until 2020

ABS-CBNnews.com
Filipino nurses may have difficulty entering the US labor market until 2020, according to party-list Rep. Arnel Ty.

“Right now, they have ample supply of US-educated nurses,” said Ty, the representative in Congress of the Liquefied Petroleum Gas Marketers’ Association (LPG-MA).

In a statement, Ty cited statistics from America’s National Council of State Boards of Nursing which show that the US produced close to a million nurses from 2006 to 2011.

Ty said the US demand for Filipino and other foreign nurses may start to recover in 8 years when thousands of US-based nurses would have retired.

The US first encountered a shortage of nurses in 1998. This created a surge in number of Filipino nursing graduates hoping to get a career in the US.

However, the gap has since been filled by the large increase in the number of American nurses, plus a deluge of foreign-educated practitioners.

Due to the huge oversupply of nurses in the Philippines, both the Commission on Higher Education and the Professional Regulation Commission have been urging high school graduates to shun nursing.

                                  
Late response

Ty blamed regulators for their late response to labor market conditions.

“They should be more aggressive in researching and projecting future labor market conditions, both here and abroad, to help guide young Filipinos as to potential career paths,” he said.

“Regulators are just reacting to what is already happening, such as the apparent glut of nursing graduates. Their late advisories would be more valuable once these are predictive and instructive, rather than merely reactive,” Ty said.

From 1995 to 2011, Ty said a total of 145,081 Filipino nurses sought to practice their profession in America by taking for the first time (excluding repeaters) the US licensure exam, or NCLEX.

However, Ty said that “from 2006 to 2011 alone, a total of 938,552 US nursing graduates also took the NCLEX for the first time.”

Special jobs plan

Ty said he has been pushing for a new law that “would establish a special local jobs plan for idle Filipino nurses, now estimated at more than 300,000.”

He has filed House Bill 4582, which seeks an expanded version of the Nurses Assigned in Rural Service or NARS, “the short-lived Philippine government project that enlisted nurses to improve healthcare in poverty-stricken towns.”

Ty’s said the Special Program for the Employment of Nurses in Urban and Rural Services (NURSE) “would mobilize a total of 10,000 practitioners every year.”