Nursing Volunteerism In The Philippines

According to the Asian Journal of health, Nursing is the nation’s largest health care profession, with 2.6 million registered nurses (RN’s), and many more needed in the future. Nurses are the largest single component of any hospital staff, the primary provider of hospital patient care and they deliver most of the nation’s nursing home care. Nurses work in a variety of other settings. Surprisingly, nowadays, majority of the nursing staff we see in Hospitals are in fact, Volunteer nurses.

Volunteerism has been a trend sometime between 2007 up to now since there is a sudden influx of the population of nurses in the Philippines while there are limited posts for staff nurse positions. It is never hidden that most nurses volunteer only to gain professional experience as prerequisite for their employments abroad. Most countries require a minimum of 2 years hospital experience, thus, forcing the nurses to go into hard work even without compensation. 

There are varying reports about the repercussions of nurses’ volunteers’ work. The PNA claims that volunteer nurses are being exploited by requiring volunteers to pay a fee at the same time availing of the volunteers’ professional services. On the other hand, the Department of Health(DOH) is defending the “training-for-free” scheme in government hospitals, saying that the fees are cancelled by hospitals for specialized training courses for nurse trainees. 

Upon further investigation and pondering, Department of Health Secretary Enrique T. ONA, issued memorandum 2011-0238 mandating to terminate all “Nurse Volunteer Programs”, “Volunteer Training Programs for Nurses” and all similar or related programs, in all DOH-retained hospitals in the Philippines.

However, it is still questionable up to this date whether the memorandum  is strictly followed by the hospitals since volunteerism among nurses nationwide is still very evident. 

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