Since the flourishing of the population of nurses in the Philippines at the turn of the Millenium, there have been several abuses and exploitation in the employment schemes provided for nurses in Philippines hospitals. Perhaps, the most prominent form of abuse, among others, is volunteerism.
Graduate nurses are now facing massive unemployment and underemployment. Statistics of unemployed Filipino nurses hit 150,000 in 2008. Newly licensed nurses would volunteer to work in the hospitals to get the needed experience and training. The Philippine Nurses Association (PNA) claims that volunteer nurses are being exploited by requiring volunteers to pay a fee while availing of the volunteers’ professional services.
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.
ANG NARS Partylist, led by Hon. Leah Paquiz, urges every Filipino nurses across the country to stand up for themselves and report the slightest hint of work-related abuse and exploitation. The advocate group tells nurses to never hesitate and seek assistance from the DOLE INVESTIGATIONS OF HOSPITALS given the assurance that the Party list and the Alliance Filipino Workers (AFW) are there to extensively give them a hand.
This is in an attempt to eradicate the prevalence of false volunteerism and training in the country. Ang Nars also reiterated that they would openly investigate hospitals who are not giving appropriate financial compensations for the nurses' efforts and hardwork. All of these were discussed last December 8, 2016 in the AFW round table conference.
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