The Best and Top Performing Nursing Schools in the Philippines

Nursing has become an in demand profession abroad for Filipinos. This is because rich foreign countries like U.S., Canada, Japan, Norway and Austria are in need of nurses caused by steep population growth resulting in a growing need for health care services; a diminishing pipeline of new students in nursing; an aging nursing workforce; and the lack of interest among youths to take up nursing because of the difficult and risky working conditions. In the United States alone, the demand for nurses is estimated at 600,000 between now and 2020.

Filipino nurses prefer to work abroad because of its high pay. Low salary, and political instability are also some frequent reasons cited by Filipino nurses trying their luck abroad.

Due to the increasing demand of nurses abroad, many Filipinos who seek this opportunity prefer to study nursing here in the Philippines then, afterwards, work as nurse abroad. Some Doctors also study to become nurses just to leave the country and work abroad.

On the other hand, People in business community also see this as an opportunity to establish nursing schools due also to the increasing number of students who want to earn a degree in nursing. That is why so many nursing schools are sprouting like mushrooms nowadays without a guarantee that they can give a good standard of nursing education. In June 2005 record of Professional Regulation Commission, 26,000 graduates of nursing took the licensure exam but 12,843 or only 50% of then passed.

The Commission on Higher Education (CHED) tries to regulate the newly established nursing schools to ensure that they met the minimum quality and standards of nursing education. In line with this, CHED, together with the Professional Regulatory Commission (PRC) released, on April 2005, a statistics of top performing nursing schools in the Philippines based on the Board Exam passing rates for 2000-2004. Out of 175 Nursing schools, only 12 had a passing rates of 90% or higher. Below is the rank and passing rates of the 12 top performing nursing schools;

1 UP-Manila 100%
2 St. Paul College-Iloilo 99.57%
3 Silliman University - Dumaguete City 98.39
4 West Visayas State University 97.06%
5 University of Santo Tomas Manila 96.67%
6 Saint Louis University - Baguio City 95.05
7 Mindanao State University Marawi City 95.0%
8 St. Paul College-Dumaguete City 93.38
9 Pamantasan ng Lunsod ng Maynila 92.53%
10 SAINT MARY’S UNIVERSITY - Bayombong 91.02%
11 St. Paul College-Manila 90.81%
12 University of the East-Ramon Magsaysay Memorial Center 90.57%

This statistics simply means that many nursing schools does not guarantee a good quality of nursing education such that their students failed to pass the board exams. So, if you want to pursue a nursing degree, study first the quality of the standard of education of the nursing school that you want to enroll with. Nursing profession can give you a lot of money from abroad but it’s too expensive to finish a nursing degree. Why waste a lot of money if you will just failed to acquire a professional license after your graduation.

References:
nurseimmigrationusa.com/Downloads/CoreFiles/
Filipino_nurses_becoming_more_in_demand.htm
pcij.org/stories/2005/nursing-schools-performance2.pdf
pcij.org/stories/2005/nursing-schools-performance1.pdf

For more information about nursing profession regulation in the Philippines, visit the PRC website at;
http://www.prc.gov.ph/portal.asp?pid=63

Filed in Science and Health
Local date: March, 2010