PHILIPPINES Of nearly a million registered nurses in the Philippines, one-third work outside their country

After receiving excellent training in their country, most prefer to go to other countries due to too low wages. Last year President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. set a maximum limit of 7,000 emigrants. It takes at least 12 years to fill the staff shortage in Philippine hospitals.

Manila () – According to recent statements by the Philippine health minister, Teodoro Herbosa, the country’s nurses are “the best in the world”. However, the Philippine daily inquirer.net. reports that of the almost one million workers registered in the national statistics, a large number work outside the country, for reasons well known locally: very low wages compared to the excessive number of working hours.

Data from the Professional Regulation Commission show that there are 951,105 registered nurses in the country, although only 509,297 practice the profession, while about a third, 316,415, have emigrated abroad, according to the most recent information from the Department of Health. .

The countries where the most Filipino nurses are employed – women make up about 75% of the workforce in the sector – are: Austria, Canada, Germany, Japan, Saudi Arabia, Singapore and the United States. Last year, President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. set a maximum limit for leaving the country of 7,000 nurses per year.

The reason why Filipino nurses are so much in demand in other countries is their excellent training. According to Jocelyn Andamo, Secretary General of Filipino Nurses United (FNU), “Filipino nurses are competent and very caring at the same time” and “they also speak English perfectly.” In 2022, among 111 countries, Filipinos ranked 22nd in English language proficiency. But that’s not all: Andamo says that Filipina workers have a “positive attitude,” are capable of “good interpersonal relationships,” and are endowed with “compassion.”

However, all these qualities are not rewarded in their country of origin. According to data from the Department of Health, an additional 127,000 nurses would be needed in the Philippines to provide optimal medical care. A gap that would require 12 years to close.

The NSF claims that the only way to convince Filipino nurses to stay is to increase salaries, which in the public sector have been set at 32,097 pesos (less than 530 euros) per month, but thousands of nurses receive far less than what the national contract indicates and consider that the obvious option is to move abroad, where the wages are much higher (00 in the United States and £1662 in the United Kingdom, for example). The organization explains that it is necessary to regularize all contracts, increase the salary to 50,000 pesos per month and guarantee a sustainable nurse-patient relationship to solve the serious shortage of personnel, which became evident during the Covid-19 pandemic. According to FNU, the ideal ratio is 1 to 12, while at this time a Filipino nurse can care for even 20 to 50 patients per shift.