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. ###
