THE BATTLE is far from over for the Faculty Association of the College of Nursing (Facon) as it filed a petition last Nov. 2 asking the Supreme Court (SC) to order a retake of the June nursing licensure exams.
Facon and other concerned groups in the healthcare industry also asked the SC to nullify the Court of Appeals’ (CA) Oct. 13 decision which allowed more than 15,000 nursing board passers to take their oaths last Oct. 27. The CA also ordered more than 1,000 examinees believed to have benefited from the leakage to retake the examinations in the next board exams this December.
“It’s not yet over, we have gone very far,” Facon president Rene Tadle told the Varsitarian. “If the higher court decides in our favor, what will happen to their (passers’) licenses?”
Last Oct. 16, Facon, the League of Concerned Nurses, and the Samahan ng Binuklod na Student Nurses filed a motion for reconsideration asking the CA to shed light on its decision. The CA previously nullified the Professional Regulation Commission’s (PRC) Resolution 31, which re-computed the grades of the examinees in the Medical Surgical Nursing and Psychiatric Nursing tests, allowing 1,687 examinees who allegedly failed the exams initially to pass, and 1,184 examinees who allegedly passed the exams to fail.
The PRC earlier scheduled the oath-taking of the passers on Oct. 16, only to be postponed by Malacañang because it believed that the CA decision was not yet final.
“We want the justices to add clarity to its decision because we still have plenty of questions,” said Michael Angelo Brant, leader of the Samahan ng mga Binuklod na Student Nurses. “We also want them to reconsider the pieces of evidence that we still have to present.”
Facon clarified that it had nothing to do with the postponement of the oath-taking because their motion did not include a temporary restraining order.
“The problem with the decision was that while the CA recognized the errors, the leakage issue was not really dealt with,” Tadle said.
Meanwhile, the US Commission on Graduates of Foreign Nursing Schools (CGFNS) has yet to decide if it will grant Visascreen, which is a government requirement for healthcare professionals, to applicants from the June 2006 batch who are planning to work in the United States.
“The board directed its staff and counsel to review and asses whether the licensure process in light of the challenged results of the leakage tainted June 2006 exam is comparable with that required for nurses licensed in America,” the CGFNS said in its website.
“We are still not sure of the passers’ competence,” Tadle said. Ivan Angelo T. de Lara
