TWO BILLS—House Bill No. 5616 or the New Philippine Pharmacy Act and House Bill No. 6411 or the Comprehensive Nursing Law—seek to upgrade health care. The former has been approved on third and final reading while the latter will have its third reading come May 23.
In the proposed nursing law, the government is mandated to assign nurses in every barangay, workplace and school.
According to a report during the 15th Congress, the ratio of nurses in the Philippine General Hospital, the largest training hospital in the country, is an alarming one nurse for every 25 patients.
The ideal nurse-to-patient ratio is 1:4. This will enable full monitoring of patients and efficient administration of medication. An imbalance on this ratio can prejudice patients.
Scarcity of doctors and nurses in most rural areas is also a problem, considering that most health workers are found in cities.
This issue of scarcity of nurses in rural public hospitals is ironic, since most nursing graduates have a hard time in getting jobs and end up practicing a different profession.
The proposed new laws will not only benefit Filipino patients but will also be an avenue to provide more job opportunities for registered nurses. An increase in salary and additional benefits will also be given to nurses. An entry level salary of P24,887 has been proposed for public health facilities, compared with the current rate of P18,657.
Meanwhile, the proposed Pharmacy Act aims to prioritize pharmacists in dispensing medicines. It would require all drugstores dispensing medications to have registered pharmacists or pharmacy graduates as employees.
At present, leading drugstores hire employees from other professions to be pharmacy assistants, who commonly face the consumers when they purchase medication. The pharmacist has limited interaction with the patients since much of his time is devoted to managerial work.
With this, several cases of adverse effects due to wrong dispensing of drugs and lack of medication counseling have affected Filipinos.
For instance, one of the most prominent cases of medication mishandling is the dispensing of antibiotics without a doctor’s prescription. Since bacteria are prone to antibiotic resistance especially if the antibiotic taken is not consulted to a licensed doctor, patients have no choice but to take higher doses of antibiotics which would cause adverse effects to their physiology.
Another concern is misconception that over-the-counter drugs are “completely safe.” These medications have toxicity at certain doses that can only be determined and explained by a registered pharmacist.
How can consumers be properly guided if there is only one pharmacist, or even none, in a drugstore?
Surely, one way to protect consumers and improve healthcare is to upgrade the situation of health professionals.
