By JENNY F. MANONGDO
Manila Bulletin
Wednesday, January 10, 2007
The number of doctors who left the country to become nurses abroad has reached 6,000 since year 2000 while 3,000 more are currently enrolled in nursing schools, latest estimates from Dr. Jimmy Galvez-Tan, former executive director of the University of the Philippines-National Institute of Health (UP-NIH) and professor of medicine in UP, revealed.
Dr. Galvez-Tan, who has monitored the trend of exodus among local health professionals, said that approximately 1,000 of them leave the country each year.
Mental health experts are also leaving.
Psychiatrists number only 400 across the country, yet some of them are also enticed to go abroad. Five of them have taken up nursing and one has left for abroad recently, the Philippine Psychiatric Association (PPA) said in a forum in Quezon City yesterday.
"The reality is, even the medical community does not put in that kind of importance. In the medical community, we have the specialty that is not very popular among medical students. Ob-Gyn, Surgery, Pediatrics is at par with us at some point. But how can you pit yourself against ob-gyn, surgery in practice, they earn very much," Dr. Lourdes Ladrido Ignacio, founding president of PPA, said.
"In Psychiatry, even if we spend that many hours, it’s not quite appreciated that every minute there is professional work. Every minute for a surgeon is professional work but it’s worth P20,000 right away," Dr. Ignacio added.
She said others have decided to leave due to economic reasons and many professional Filipinos go where their talents are also appreciated, she said.
Dr. Ignacio said psychiatrists are well-distributed in hospitals in Metro Manila but there is a shortage of psychiatrists in far-flung areas such as Cotabato and Surigao provinces.
At a separate forum earlier, child psychiatry experts revealed the same dilemma.
At present, only 41 child psychiatrists are active in their field supposedly catering to 36-million children below 19 years old that makes up 40 percent of the total population.
The Child and Adolescent Psychiatrists of the Philippines, Inc. (CAPPI) said there is one child psychiatrist in Cebu, and another in Bacolod and Iloilo. There are two child psychiatrists in Davao, one of whom is leaving for abroad soon.
2 comments:
Sad to say, thats the FINANCIAL PROBLEM were facing so most of our doctors went out of the country and demoting themself just to have job abroad from being a doctors to nurses. can't we see what we are facing here aside from brain drain, to shortage of health workers here in our country.
Yeah! and that was really sad, but we can't blame them. Nurses in abroad has a high salary rather so that they take the opportunity to have a job abroad. Wish we can also pay them good so that they don't have to go abroad.
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