By all means, fall in love but not with yourself By Dr. Dante Ang
By all means, fall in love but not with yourself
(Speech delivered by Dr. Dante Ang before UST students)
Manila Times
First of three parts
I trust that by now, most of the students at the University of Sto. Tomas must be familiar with the raging controversy that enveloped the recently concluded nursing board examination and its attendant issues.
Briefly, cheating did indeed occur in Tests 3 and 5 of the exam.
The leaked manuscripts came from two members of the Board of Nursing. One blamed poor health; the other, outright ignorance.
The manuscripts eventually found their way to the Gapuz, Inress and Pentagon review centers.
In Baguio City all available photocopy shops were contracted and reams upon reams of leaked questions were photocopied and ultimately distributed to the examinees. For a fee, I suppose.
In Manila the Inress review center had its “final coaching” held at the SM Megamall, attended by some 22 deans of nursing colleges, whose identities remain unknown at this writing. A number of reviewers also attended the coaching session.
Despite the admission of leakages, the Philippine Regulatory Commission (PRC), the Board of Nursing (BON) and some “successful” examinees refused to admit that the June 2006 Board exam has become unreliable and that it has subsequently tainted all participants, including the honest ones.
The PRC and BON insist that they have cleansed the examination of the virus and, therefore, its integrity remains intact. Some of those who passed the test agree with this assessment and are saying that they should be allowed to take their oath and their license issued in the interest of fairness.
“Punish the guilty and spare the innocent. No retake,” so goes the “cry for justice” of the board and the commission.
But in asking for a retake, are we sparing the guilty and punishing the innocent?
Consider this. Didn’t the PRC and BON punish the innocent when the test grades and assigned weights were recomputed, thus effectively lowering the passing average and eroding the level of competence of those who passed the nursing board?
Didn’t the PRC and BON punish the innocent when, in their haste to prevent the cheaters from benefiting from the leak, they invalidated 20 questions for Test 3 and reduced the percent weight for Test 5 from 20 to 10, thereby lowering the passing average and consigning those who must have excelled in the exam to the level of mediocrity?
Didn’t the PRC and BON punish the innocent when in their scramble to cover their incompetence, they gave a 2-percent bonus to the examinees, allowing 1,600 flunkers to pass, throwing the unqualified in the ranks of the competent ones?
Didn’t the PRC and BON punish the innocent and damage the interests of the honest nurses by lumping the cheats and the innocent together, tainting the integrity of professional nurses and jeopardizing their employability here and abroad?
Forked tongue
To confuse the public and obviate the relevant issues, the PRC and BON resorted to employing an American and a Filipina partner who tried to mislead our nurses by announcing publicly that “the 17,000 and 1,000 nurses are hired provided they pass NCLEX.” As the Indian would say in a Western movie: “Pale face speaks with forked tongue.”
In the first place, the two are outright recruiters. They have no power to hire nurses for employment to the United States. Note their qualifier: “After passing the NCLEX and interview with the American hospital.”
And there lies the problem. In the first place, I am not very optimistic that the incompetents will pass the NCLEX. And even if they did, I doubt if they could hurdle the personal interview where core competence, attitude, work ethic and values are the main focus of the one-on-one meeting.
All right, I’ll grant that even the incompetents can make it to the United States. Good luck. After all, the PRC and BON say that there are other modes of determining the core competency of the nurses, like school records and clinical experience.
(To be continued)
By all means, fall in love but not with yourself part II
Manila Times
(Dr. Dante A. Ang’s speech before University of Santo Tomas students)
Second of three parts
All right, I’ll grant that even the incompetents can make it to the United States. Good luck. After all, the PRC and BON say that there are other modes of determining the core competency of the nurses, like school records and clinical experience.
That being the case, perhaps we should abolish the PRC. Following its logic, the commission has become superfluous, an unnecessary bureaucratic layer and an added burden to our professionals. May I remind the PRC that, like the Central Bank, it is the repository of public trust, of confidence, of integrity. It sets the national standard of excellence for our board exams.
Instead of correcting their mistakes, what did the PRC and BON do? They tried to inveigle the nurses into believing that, contrary to the general notion, the nurses are not suffering from any form of stigma and that jobs await them here and in countries abroad.
To prove that point, the PRC presented an American recruiter and a Filipina partner who said that they are hiring the June 2006 batch, all 17,000 of them. Yet in the same breath, the recruiter said, provided our nurses pass the NCLEX and the personal interview. This is B.S.
Did you know that recruiters are paid by the American hospitals $100 for each referral and from $7,000 to $10,000 for each nurse recruited? You may want to ask: how many of our nurses have signed up with this American recruiter and his partner?
Oh yes, this American and his partner would want us to believe that their hearts are bleeding for the Filipino nurses, except that they are crying all the way to the bank.
I wonder if they have secured a written approval from the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration to advertise their job vacancies. Maybe they did. But to announce on television that 17,000 or even 1,000 are hired even before these nurses could fill out an application form, their act must be more than a violation of the POEA rules; it is an outright lie!
I’d say, throw these “vultures” out of the country for living off the misery of our nurses and for engaging in double talk, invariably raising false hopes among the nurses. If that’s not a crime, what is?
I can go on and on with the list of how the PRC and BON have inflicted harm, how they have tarred the integrity and image of our honest and competent nurses. But let us set that aside momentarily and talk briefly about the June 2006 batch whose interests, according to the PRC, BON and some successful examinees, will be prejudiced if they retake Tests 3 and 5.
“No retake. Punish the guilty. Spare the innocent,” cry the commission, the board and the takers. One would not argue with such a cry, unless one remembers that the leakage was so pervasive that it is almost impossible to objectively distinguish the innocent from the guilty.
Besides, 90 out of 100 questions for Test 5 were leaked, reducing its weight from 20 percent to 10 (even granting they passed the module with flying colors), sending their grades down, bringing down their bar of competence and consigning them to the depths of mediocrity.
Worse, the PRC and the BON, in a sweeping, dubious and illogical move, employed a statistical mumbo-jumbo that effectively punished the innocent along with the guilty.
We talk of fairness, justice and the rights of the nurses. Fine. We should also continue to protect and uphold the privileges of our nurses.
The rights of the patients
That’s one side of the story. The other side is the right and responsibility of the hospitals to employ competent, trustworthy nurses who can take care of the old, the young and the sick. And what about the rights of the patients? Who cares about them?
The prerogatives of the patients make up the bigger part of the rights issue. In the end, nurses are sworn to serve the weak, the old and the sick. Serving the patients, to my mind, is the nurse’s raison d’être. Without the patient, there would be no need for a nurse.
That being the case, the interest of the nurse is conflated with the interest of the patient. The patient’s well-being is supreme and takes precedence over the rights of the nurse.
The issue, therefore, is not whether the nurse passed the board exam or not. It has more to do with the competence of the nurse and the patient’s trust and confidence in the nurse; there is no other issue.
I hope I have illuminated your minds with my oft-repeated line on the issue of the June 2006 nursing board. But more than that, I also want to talk to you about the relevance of the anomaly to our search for excellence and success, professional and personal. Surely, there must be lessons learned from it all.
I want to talk to you about values, and how they help shape our destiny as a people. Values mold character, that one rare commodity that separates the successful from the mediocre; the serene from the miserable; man from beast.
But first, allow me to take my hat off to the nurses and other health-care professionals. You are a class all your own. A cut above the rest. I salute you all.
A nurse belongs to a rare breed. Like the religious, nursing is not just a profession; it is a vocation. To be a nurse is to dedicate oneself to the service of the poor, the old, the sick and the dying.
To be a nurse is to think beyond oneself; to think beyond the borders of worldly possessions, beyond rewards. Your reward, as the saying goes, is your service to the sick, the family of the patient and to the community.
The nurse is the epitome of humility, dedication, selflessness, care and compassion.
We should thank the world for the nurses. Thank you, Ms. Or Mrs. Nurse.
But I came here to talk to you about values, about honor, about character.
Look around us. Observe. Have you ever wondered why despite the technological advances at our disposal today and the comfort they offer, many of us remain dissatisfied, unhappy and aimless?
Have you ever wondered what the world has finally become despite our acquisitive technology and the collective wisdom of man? The world has remained a place where the reason of force prevails over the force of reason.
Have you ever wondered why, despite the abundance of wisdom and wealth of experience, man remains essentially the beast he once was, devouring the weak, the innocent, the vulnerable?
Which brings me to my next question: If you were to make a choice, what would it be: Character or success? Wealth or family? Take your pick.
SENT VIA EMAIL
(Speech delivered by Dr. Dante Ang before UST students)
Manila Times
First of three parts
I trust that by now, most of the students at the University of Sto. Tomas must be familiar with the raging controversy that enveloped the recently concluded nursing board examination and its attendant issues.
Briefly, cheating did indeed occur in Tests 3 and 5 of the exam.
The leaked manuscripts came from two members of the Board of Nursing. One blamed poor health; the other, outright ignorance.
The manuscripts eventually found their way to the Gapuz, Inress and Pentagon review centers.
In Baguio City all available photocopy shops were contracted and reams upon reams of leaked questions were photocopied and ultimately distributed to the examinees. For a fee, I suppose.
In Manila the Inress review center had its “final coaching” held at the SM Megamall, attended by some 22 deans of nursing colleges, whose identities remain unknown at this writing. A number of reviewers also attended the coaching session.
Despite the admission of leakages, the Philippine Regulatory Commission (PRC), the Board of Nursing (BON) and some “successful” examinees refused to admit that the June 2006 Board exam has become unreliable and that it has subsequently tainted all participants, including the honest ones.
The PRC and BON insist that they have cleansed the examination of the virus and, therefore, its integrity remains intact. Some of those who passed the test agree with this assessment and are saying that they should be allowed to take their oath and their license issued in the interest of fairness.
“Punish the guilty and spare the innocent. No retake,” so goes the “cry for justice” of the board and the commission.
But in asking for a retake, are we sparing the guilty and punishing the innocent?
Consider this. Didn’t the PRC and BON punish the innocent when the test grades and assigned weights were recomputed, thus effectively lowering the passing average and eroding the level of competence of those who passed the nursing board?
Didn’t the PRC and BON punish the innocent when, in their haste to prevent the cheaters from benefiting from the leak, they invalidated 20 questions for Test 3 and reduced the percent weight for Test 5 from 20 to 10, thereby lowering the passing average and consigning those who must have excelled in the exam to the level of mediocrity?
Didn’t the PRC and BON punish the innocent when in their scramble to cover their incompetence, they gave a 2-percent bonus to the examinees, allowing 1,600 flunkers to pass, throwing the unqualified in the ranks of the competent ones?
Didn’t the PRC and BON punish the innocent and damage the interests of the honest nurses by lumping the cheats and the innocent together, tainting the integrity of professional nurses and jeopardizing their employability here and abroad?
Forked tongue
To confuse the public and obviate the relevant issues, the PRC and BON resorted to employing an American and a Filipina partner who tried to mislead our nurses by announcing publicly that “the 17,000 and 1,000 nurses are hired provided they pass NCLEX.” As the Indian would say in a Western movie: “Pale face speaks with forked tongue.”
In the first place, the two are outright recruiters. They have no power to hire nurses for employment to the United States. Note their qualifier: “After passing the NCLEX and interview with the American hospital.”
And there lies the problem. In the first place, I am not very optimistic that the incompetents will pass the NCLEX. And even if they did, I doubt if they could hurdle the personal interview where core competence, attitude, work ethic and values are the main focus of the one-on-one meeting.
All right, I’ll grant that even the incompetents can make it to the United States. Good luck. After all, the PRC and BON say that there are other modes of determining the core competency of the nurses, like school records and clinical experience.
(To be continued)
By all means, fall in love but not with yourself part II
Manila Times
(Dr. Dante A. Ang’s speech before University of Santo Tomas students)
Second of three parts
All right, I’ll grant that even the incompetents can make it to the United States. Good luck. After all, the PRC and BON say that there are other modes of determining the core competency of the nurses, like school records and clinical experience.
That being the case, perhaps we should abolish the PRC. Following its logic, the commission has become superfluous, an unnecessary bureaucratic layer and an added burden to our professionals. May I remind the PRC that, like the Central Bank, it is the repository of public trust, of confidence, of integrity. It sets the national standard of excellence for our board exams.
Instead of correcting their mistakes, what did the PRC and BON do? They tried to inveigle the nurses into believing that, contrary to the general notion, the nurses are not suffering from any form of stigma and that jobs await them here and in countries abroad.
To prove that point, the PRC presented an American recruiter and a Filipina partner who said that they are hiring the June 2006 batch, all 17,000 of them. Yet in the same breath, the recruiter said, provided our nurses pass the NCLEX and the personal interview. This is B.S.
Did you know that recruiters are paid by the American hospitals $100 for each referral and from $7,000 to $10,000 for each nurse recruited? You may want to ask: how many of our nurses have signed up with this American recruiter and his partner?
Oh yes, this American and his partner would want us to believe that their hearts are bleeding for the Filipino nurses, except that they are crying all the way to the bank.
I wonder if they have secured a written approval from the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration to advertise their job vacancies. Maybe they did. But to announce on television that 17,000 or even 1,000 are hired even before these nurses could fill out an application form, their act must be more than a violation of the POEA rules; it is an outright lie!
I’d say, throw these “vultures” out of the country for living off the misery of our nurses and for engaging in double talk, invariably raising false hopes among the nurses. If that’s not a crime, what is?
I can go on and on with the list of how the PRC and BON have inflicted harm, how they have tarred the integrity and image of our honest and competent nurses. But let us set that aside momentarily and talk briefly about the June 2006 batch whose interests, according to the PRC, BON and some successful examinees, will be prejudiced if they retake Tests 3 and 5.
“No retake. Punish the guilty. Spare the innocent,” cry the commission, the board and the takers. One would not argue with such a cry, unless one remembers that the leakage was so pervasive that it is almost impossible to objectively distinguish the innocent from the guilty.
Besides, 90 out of 100 questions for Test 5 were leaked, reducing its weight from 20 percent to 10 (even granting they passed the module with flying colors), sending their grades down, bringing down their bar of competence and consigning them to the depths of mediocrity.
Worse, the PRC and the BON, in a sweeping, dubious and illogical move, employed a statistical mumbo-jumbo that effectively punished the innocent along with the guilty.
We talk of fairness, justice and the rights of the nurses. Fine. We should also continue to protect and uphold the privileges of our nurses.
The rights of the patients
That’s one side of the story. The other side is the right and responsibility of the hospitals to employ competent, trustworthy nurses who can take care of the old, the young and the sick. And what about the rights of the patients? Who cares about them?
The prerogatives of the patients make up the bigger part of the rights issue. In the end, nurses are sworn to serve the weak, the old and the sick. Serving the patients, to my mind, is the nurse’s raison d’être. Without the patient, there would be no need for a nurse.
That being the case, the interest of the nurse is conflated with the interest of the patient. The patient’s well-being is supreme and takes precedence over the rights of the nurse.
The issue, therefore, is not whether the nurse passed the board exam or not. It has more to do with the competence of the nurse and the patient’s trust and confidence in the nurse; there is no other issue.
I hope I have illuminated your minds with my oft-repeated line on the issue of the June 2006 nursing board. But more than that, I also want to talk to you about the relevance of the anomaly to our search for excellence and success, professional and personal. Surely, there must be lessons learned from it all.
I want to talk to you about values, and how they help shape our destiny as a people. Values mold character, that one rare commodity that separates the successful from the mediocre; the serene from the miserable; man from beast.
But first, allow me to take my hat off to the nurses and other health-care professionals. You are a class all your own. A cut above the rest. I salute you all.
A nurse belongs to a rare breed. Like the religious, nursing is not just a profession; it is a vocation. To be a nurse is to dedicate oneself to the service of the poor, the old, the sick and the dying.
To be a nurse is to think beyond oneself; to think beyond the borders of worldly possessions, beyond rewards. Your reward, as the saying goes, is your service to the sick, the family of the patient and to the community.
The nurse is the epitome of humility, dedication, selflessness, care and compassion.
We should thank the world for the nurses. Thank you, Ms. Or Mrs. Nurse.
But I came here to talk to you about values, about honor, about character.
Look around us. Observe. Have you ever wondered why despite the technological advances at our disposal today and the comfort they offer, many of us remain dissatisfied, unhappy and aimless?
Have you ever wondered what the world has finally become despite our acquisitive technology and the collective wisdom of man? The world has remained a place where the reason of force prevails over the force of reason.
Have you ever wondered why, despite the abundance of wisdom and wealth of experience, man remains essentially the beast he once was, devouring the weak, the innocent, the vulnerable?
Which brings me to my next question: If you were to make a choice, what would it be: Character or success? Wealth or family? Take your pick.
SENT VIA EMAIL
