By Prof. Rene Luis M. Tadle and Atty. Cheryl L. Daytec-Yangot
[Prof. Rene Luis M. Tadle is president of the faculty of the College of Nursing, University of Santo Tomas. Atty. Cheryl L. Daytec-Yangot, M.PA., is the counsel for the Baguio Braves.]
The Manila Times
Special Report: NLE Leakage
Monday, October 30, 2006
Another reason why the Supreme Court’s handling of the bar leakage is not applicable to the nursing issue is that mercantile law does not deal with life, unlike all the subject areas of nursing. Mercantile Law deals with commerce—it deals with property.
To overstate the obvious, life is not the same as property. An error in the business of handling lives is irremediable. It can result in death or an existence akin to it. Bluntly put, there is no room for mistakes in nursing.
Unlike a mistake committed by the lawyer whose competence in mercantile law was not measured, that of a nurse cannot be appealed. This is not to say, of course, that lawyers have freedom to be lackadaisical in handling client’s properties. But it is a fact that there is an opportunity to correct the mistake of a lawyer who did not take an exam in mercantile law. Whereas there is no opportunity to correct the nurse’s mistake which precipitated a patient’s jumping off a bridge to his/her death, a tragedy that could have been avoided if the nurse were competent in psychiatric nursing.
The predicament the examinees now find themselves in is a creation of the PRC. Undoubtedly had it acted with the same pace and resoluteness as the Court did in 2003, the examinees would not be in a quandary and their misery would not have been unjustly prolonged.
At this point, the spinning out of their agony is nonnegotiable if some kinks have to be ironed out and some wrongs have to be righted. Otherwise, their competence and the integrity of the nursing profession would be sullied forever. Theirs is a monumental sacrifice—albeit forced on them—which the government must recognize with no less than a decisive and judicious resolution of their problem.
It is not only the credibility of the June 2006 examination that is the casualty of PRC’s mishandling of the leakage issue. The bigger casualty is the value of our people, their sense of right and wrong and their ability to discern heroism from villainy.
Lionizing the guilty
In this drama—or more appropriately, tragedy—someone has to be blamed. Sad to say, a mob has emerged to lynch the good guys and deify the bad guys.
Before the release of the exam result, the PRC was beleaguered. Afterward, a group of people on its “passed” list started lionizing the PRC officials. Their supposed virtues of magnanimity and sacrifice are being extolled by leaders of the Alliance of New Nurses (ANN).
Concerned individuals suspect that the ANN was organized by the PRC to launder its image and deflect the pointing fingers from it to others. To some, this is not hard to believe because the organization was born only after the release of the NLE result. Its leaders were never vocal against cheating before the release of the exam and even after. It is reported that a leader also reviewed with a certain now-notorious review center and finished the fraud-plagued Test 5 of the NLE in less than half an hour.
Although ANN members keep chanting, “Punish the guilty!” they pin guilt on the wrong people and are quick to absolve the PRC. Their efforts seem to be focused on generating public sympathy for the PRC officials and isolating those who remain relentless in their quest for truth and integrity.
In the recent ANN-led rally, the PRC officials, the two Board of Nursing members who leaked questions, and the owners of review centers identified to have propagated the leak were not among those people (which included these two writers) whose names were written on their streamers as the ones responsible for their woes.
Informed inside sources say that the ANN officers are frequent PRC visitors. The members of the alliance even serve as volunteer staff of the PRC, which bolsters doubts on its motives. When Board Chairman Eufemia Octaviano was confronted about this, she saw nothing wrong with it. This should not be unnerving anymore. After all, this is the same official who traveled with the owner of a review school—a perpetrator of the leakage—to Switzerland and saw nothing wrong with it. This is the same official who admitted that oath-taking fees amounting to millions of pesos are being deposited in BON members’ private accounts and saw nothing wrong with it.
Demonizing the heroes
The Baguio Braves, the petitioners in the Court of Appeals cases, the members of academe from St. Louis University, Eastern College, University of the Philippines, University of the East, Far Eastern University, University of Sto. Tomas and other reputable schools—whose only intention is to reclaim the virtues that were compromised in the PRC-authored fiasco—are the real heroes. Thankfully, the silent majority recognizes this.
But to the mob that is no longer ruled by discipline and reason but by emotion, they are the scoundrels. Government officials who point out PRC’s errors are pilloried. It is reported that in blogsites, members of the mob even use obscene language. They have gone as far as calling the whistleblowers liars. It is alarming to watch these people turn a blind eye to cheating as long as they get what they want. And except for the second coursers, they have not even begun their careers.
The older nurses who are now in their 50’s, 60’s and 70’s, some of whom reject the position that all the examinees must retake, are disturbed that these young people have forgotten the virtues of Florence Nightingale so early.
One government official says that the mob is entitled to a wide berth of understanding when they praise PRC—the creator of the disaster which claimed them as victims—to high heavens and condemn those who are only trying to restore the dignity of a profession and of the Filipino people.
“It could be the voice of desperation speaking,” the official says. “They may not realize that they are barking up the wrong tree.”
The Brazilian philosopher and educator Paulo Freire would call the phenomenon internalization of oppression. By clinging to the oppressor for their salvation, they have become their own oppressors. How sad.
A story of defeat, a story of triumph
After all is said and done, we may recover the integrity of the nursing profession and expunge the stigma that taints the June 2006 batch. But will we ever recapture our sense of what is right and what is wrong, who is right and who is wrong, what is heroism and what is villainy?
The nursing fiasco is a heartbreaking story about the corruption of virtues and an institution that should preserve them, and the extreme price which the innocent have to unjustly pay. But because there are those among us dedicated to retrieving what we lost, because there are those among us who value truth more than comfort, it is also an inspiring story about enduring dedication to integrity and honor and the determination to live by them.
It is a story of defeat as much as it is a story of triumph. It is a story of destruction as much as it is a story of redemption. ###
Tuesday, October 31, 2006
Sunday, July 30, 2006
Nursing Board Examinees Slam PRC: For releasing exam results despite pending leakage investigation
Complainants of the alleged leakage of the recently conducted nursing board examinations denounced the Professional Regulations Commission’s (PRC) decision to release the results even without digging deeper into the controversy. Even if most of them passed, the more than 100 are questioning the integrity of the regulations body because even as it confirmed the leakage, it failed to name those responsible.
BY ACE ALEGRE
Bulatlat
BAGUIO CITY – Complainants of the alleged leakage of the recently conducted nursing board examinations denounced the Professional Regulations Commission’s (PRC) decision to release the results last July 19 even without digging deeper into the controversy.
Even if most of them passed, the more than 100 are questioning the integrity of the regulations body because even as it confirmed the leakage, it failed to name those responsible.
“It seems that all that the PRC has been doing is a sham. First, it conducted an independent investigation that concluded with an almost empty outcome,” said Karen Calderon, speaking for the 192 complainants.
Although it confirmed the leakage, Calderon said, the public now questions the integrity of the entire Board of Nursing (BoN).
“Now, it released examination results whose credibility can hardly be established because the leakage has not yet been adequately addressed and thoroughly investigated,” she said.
The PRC however stressed that keeping the 42,000 examinees waiting for an indefinite period would be unfair, hence the release of the board results. However, the PRC later clarified that the passers’ licenses could still be revoked if the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) find “evidence of a leakage.”
“It appears that the PRC has been carrying out actions that are either not at all rationally informed or tainted with intentions to conceal the truth,” Calredon said.
“In the first place, why did the PRC release the board results while investigation into the leakage is still pending? How can it guarantee the credibility of such results without spelling out how the leaked questions were treated?”
Calderon however explained that they did not want to delay the release of the examination results if only to keep themselves and the many other examinees waiting. “We simply wanted to make sure that the results would be reliable,” she said.
“The PRC should have at least explained how it came up with the results despite the leakage. The board results are useless if they are not credible.”
On July 27, Baguio-based nursing leaders together with their counsels went to the PRC national office in Manila to ask the agency to explain how it came up with the results. They met with the four BoN members who promised, as advised by the complainants’ counsel Cheryl Daytec-Yangot, to issue a resolution that would explain to the public how they treated the examination questions that were proven to be leaked and how they came up with the results despite the leakage. (The two others who were implicated in the leakage were asked to inhibit themselves from BoN matters.)
Calderon said the BoN explained that scientific statistical procedures were employed to analyze the overall effect of the leakage on the result of the examinations. It said that the whole of Test V was invalidated as there was some evidence which showed that almost all of the questions in the test were leaked, Calderon said.
What was startling was that despite the invalidation of all the questions in Test V, the examinees were still given scores for the said test, Calderon said. “How could there be a score for a test that in effect had no questions? More importantly, how was the examinees’ aptitude in the particular area of competency measured by Test V assessed when Test V was totally nullified?”
Each of the five tests in the nursing board examination was supposed to measure the examinees’competence in a particular field of nursing practice. Test V of the June 2006 nursing board pertained to Psychiatric Nursing.
“Certainly, statistics is not the correct basis for evaluating the examinees’ competency in Psychiatric Nursing,” she said.”
The two Board of Nursing members who were identified to be involved in the leakage were already named. But it seems that the PRC has lost much of its intelligent judgment for it to be easily persuaded by the two BoN members’ incredible excuses,” Calderon added.
One of the two BoN members, she said, explained before the PRC fact-finding committee that the questions she prepared were taken away from her bag unnoticed. The other testified that a copy of her exam questions was taken without her knowledge when she photocopied the list of her questions.
These are far-fetched alibis, to say the least, Calderon said. “And all that the PRC could do was to advise the two to inhibit themselves from matters concerning the BoN while the investigation is pending,” Calderon said.
This, she added, demonstrates “that the PRC is a toothless commission which does not have the political will to pursue its investigation with resoluteness.”
Earlier, lawyer Kissak Gabaen, also speaking in behalf of the complainants, called for the suspension of the two BoN members.
However, Calderon said that the PRC cannot even recommend their suspension.
The PRC filed an administrative charge against the two BoN members for “neglect of duty that gave rise to the leakage of test questions,” a charge criticized as based solely on the latter’s alibis.
“The PRC fact-finding committee was pathetically incompetent to establish whether there was only a neglect of duty or there was a deliberate act of leaking exam questions,” Calderon said.
This, she added, has resulted in a “crisis” in the country’s nursing profession.
This week, Calderon added, the Baguio-based nursing leaders, examinees, nursing students and concerned members of the nursing profession are launching the Baguio chapter of the Coalition of Concerned Nurses (For Truth, Integrity and Justice).
© 2006 Bulatlat ■ Alipato Media Center
Permission is granted to reprint or redistribute this article, provided its author/s and Bulatlat are properly credited and notified.
BY ACE ALEGRE
Bulatlat
BAGUIO CITY – Complainants of the alleged leakage of the recently conducted nursing board examinations denounced the Professional Regulations Commission’s (PRC) decision to release the results last July 19 even without digging deeper into the controversy.
Even if most of them passed, the more than 100 are questioning the integrity of the regulations body because even as it confirmed the leakage, it failed to name those responsible.
“It seems that all that the PRC has been doing is a sham. First, it conducted an independent investigation that concluded with an almost empty outcome,” said Karen Calderon, speaking for the 192 complainants.
Although it confirmed the leakage, Calderon said, the public now questions the integrity of the entire Board of Nursing (BoN).
“Now, it released examination results whose credibility can hardly be established because the leakage has not yet been adequately addressed and thoroughly investigated,” she said.
The PRC however stressed that keeping the 42,000 examinees waiting for an indefinite period would be unfair, hence the release of the board results. However, the PRC later clarified that the passers’ licenses could still be revoked if the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) find “evidence of a leakage.”
“It appears that the PRC has been carrying out actions that are either not at all rationally informed or tainted with intentions to conceal the truth,” Calredon said.
“In the first place, why did the PRC release the board results while investigation into the leakage is still pending? How can it guarantee the credibility of such results without spelling out how the leaked questions were treated?”
Calderon however explained that they did not want to delay the release of the examination results if only to keep themselves and the many other examinees waiting. “We simply wanted to make sure that the results would be reliable,” she said.
“The PRC should have at least explained how it came up with the results despite the leakage. The board results are useless if they are not credible.”
On July 27, Baguio-based nursing leaders together with their counsels went to the PRC national office in Manila to ask the agency to explain how it came up with the results. They met with the four BoN members who promised, as advised by the complainants’ counsel Cheryl Daytec-Yangot, to issue a resolution that would explain to the public how they treated the examination questions that were proven to be leaked and how they came up with the results despite the leakage. (The two others who were implicated in the leakage were asked to inhibit themselves from BoN matters.)
Calderon said the BoN explained that scientific statistical procedures were employed to analyze the overall effect of the leakage on the result of the examinations. It said that the whole of Test V was invalidated as there was some evidence which showed that almost all of the questions in the test were leaked, Calderon said.
What was startling was that despite the invalidation of all the questions in Test V, the examinees were still given scores for the said test, Calderon said. “How could there be a score for a test that in effect had no questions? More importantly, how was the examinees’ aptitude in the particular area of competency measured by Test V assessed when Test V was totally nullified?”
Each of the five tests in the nursing board examination was supposed to measure the examinees’competence in a particular field of nursing practice. Test V of the June 2006 nursing board pertained to Psychiatric Nursing.
“Certainly, statistics is not the correct basis for evaluating the examinees’ competency in Psychiatric Nursing,” she said.”
The two Board of Nursing members who were identified to be involved in the leakage were already named. But it seems that the PRC has lost much of its intelligent judgment for it to be easily persuaded by the two BoN members’ incredible excuses,” Calderon added.
One of the two BoN members, she said, explained before the PRC fact-finding committee that the questions she prepared were taken away from her bag unnoticed. The other testified that a copy of her exam questions was taken without her knowledge when she photocopied the list of her questions.
These are far-fetched alibis, to say the least, Calderon said. “And all that the PRC could do was to advise the two to inhibit themselves from matters concerning the BoN while the investigation is pending,” Calderon said.
This, she added, demonstrates “that the PRC is a toothless commission which does not have the political will to pursue its investigation with resoluteness.”
Earlier, lawyer Kissak Gabaen, also speaking in behalf of the complainants, called for the suspension of the two BoN members.
However, Calderon said that the PRC cannot even recommend their suspension.
The PRC filed an administrative charge against the two BoN members for “neglect of duty that gave rise to the leakage of test questions,” a charge criticized as based solely on the latter’s alibis.
“The PRC fact-finding committee was pathetically incompetent to establish whether there was only a neglect of duty or there was a deliberate act of leaking exam questions,” Calderon said.
This, she added, has resulted in a “crisis” in the country’s nursing profession.
This week, Calderon added, the Baguio-based nursing leaders, examinees, nursing students and concerned members of the nursing profession are launching the Baguio chapter of the Coalition of Concerned Nurses (For Truth, Integrity and Justice).
© 2006 Bulatlat ■ Alipato Media Center
Permission is granted to reprint or redistribute this article, provided its author/s and Bulatlat are properly credited and notified.
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