DOH to hire nursing assistants

The Department of Health (DOH) will hire nursing assistants to help address the nurse shortage in government hospitals. 

In a report by Lei Alviz on "24 Oras Weekend'' on Saturday, there are currently over 4,000 vacancies for government nurses. 

"Mayroon nang ganoong proposal because they have been studying this problem on how to augment health human resource. It's Salary Grade 9, so that's about P20,000 yung salary per month. It's the one being offered as a solution, so I said that's going to go forward. It will be open to nurses who graduated four years of college but are still awaiting to pass the exams," said Health Secretary Ted Herbosa.

Meanwhile, the Filipino Nurses United (FNU) said nursing assistants would be a big help.

“Napakahirap din sa nurses kung wala silang nursing aides o nursing assistants,” said FNU secretary general Jocelyn Andamo.

However, the DOH clarified that the plan to employ nursing graduates who failed the board exam would not be shelved.

On June 19, Herbosa expressed his plan to take in unlicensed nursing graduates to work for the government, given that they pass the board exam after a certain period of time.

The Professional Regulation Commission (PRC) previously said that the DOH secretary cannot issue temporary work permits to unlicensed nurses based on the Philippine Nursing Act of 2002.

"Maybe it's a legal roadblock but I think we can hurdle it through either an amendment in the legislation for special purpose, the fact that exigency of the situation where we are implementing the Universal Health Care Act and of course we want to implement health for all. We need a lot of nurses to actually provide care," said Herbosa.

The DOH will also meet with the PRC and the Department of Labor and Employment to discuss the shortage of nurses due to migration, according to the report. —Sherylin Untalan/VBL, GMA Integrated News