Readers' Comments

21-22 MARCH 2005

ROWIE AZADA

I AGREE very much with the cautionary tone that your article, "Lack of Nurses Burdens an Ailing Healthcare System" had regarding the brain drain in the healthcare professions. I do feel that it is a serious problem that needs to be addressed. I also find the idea of enacting a National Health Service Act a promising possibility.

However, I was quite bothered with the way that two particular lines in your article were phrased. The introduction to the article included this line: "In these new curricula, the compassionate and caregiving values that are supposed to be inculcated among healthcare professionals are being overlooked; instead nursing is treated as primarily a passport to the good life." In the body of the article, this line was found: "Globalization of labor has also contributed to a materialistic attitude even among those whose profession is supposed to serve others."

I feel that these lines lacked nuance in two ways. First, they seemed to connote that healthcare professionals who seek employment abroad invariably do so for selfish and self-centered reasons. Secondly, the two statements can be taken to imply that people who work in service-oriented professions ought to happily tolerate low wages and a substandard professional environment in the name of service.

I do not think that these were, in fact, the messages you were trying to impart. Nevertheless, the lack of nuance with which these statements were phrased may have connoted such.

On the one hand, I agree that the highest ideals and values ought to be encouraged in those in service-oriented industries. However, I also feel that maintaining such ideals and values is as much a systemic task as it is the personal responsibility of the individual. A society that values doctors and nurses — as well as teachers and others in the business of providing a society's basic needs — ought to find ways to translate that appreciation into fair remuneration for these professionals' services, and into a working environment that nurtures and encourages the noblest of dreams. Instead, many sectors of such professions do the opposite, such that even the most idealistic medical, nursing, and education students quickly find themselves disillusioned and disheartened in the midst of inefficient and corrupt industries.

I do hope that the problem can be tackled from both ends: by encouraging a culture of service and nationalism among health workers, and also by improving the system which so many of them find disheartening.

CHIT ESTELLA REPLIES

THE FIRST line referred to

"In these new curricula, the compassionate and caregiving values that are supposed to be inculcated among healthcare professionals are being overlooked; instead nursing is treated as primarily a passport to the good life."

refers more to the many new nursing schools that have burgeoned since the demand for Filipino nurses went up. Nursing students that I have spoken to have themselves admitted that the manner and the substance of teaching in their school prepares them for jobs abroad rather than a compassionate and caring service toward their fellowmen.

The second sentence

"Globalization of labor has also contributed to a materialistic attitude even among those whose profession is supposed to serve others."

refers to the culture and the reality that globalization fosters. It does not always follow that every nurse or nursing student imbibes this materialistic attitude.

I would be the last person to accuse all health service workers who wish to go abroad of being selfish and self-centered. I, too , have a sister who works as a nurse abroad and I can say that the reasons are often far from that. Usually, it is concern for the family that drives our countrymen to seek a job elsewhere, as well as their dream to become the best they could be in their chosen profession. But what can we say about persons who take up a course without even having a genuine interest in it? The same students I have talked to say they have classmates who do not study, do not read, do not take the effort to be good nursing students despite the fact that their families must be stretching their resources just to pay their tuition. A nursing administrator also said that in the interviews for admission to their College of Nursing, she often comes across applicants who obviously do not have the inclination to take care of the sick. Why are they there? To go abroad.

Nurses and other health professionals are paid very badly — just like most other workers in the country. We deal with this problem in different ways--like finding second, third, fourth jobs; going on strike; going to another career that would pay more decently; and going abroad. All are excruciating choices.

What you say about the disillusionment of health professionals is true. Talking to nurses and doctors who plan to go abroad, one can always feel the pain and anger in their voices as they talk of the desperate lives that they are certain to pass on to their children if they did not leave this country. It is not their fault.

On the other hand, who will clean up the mess? The hardest thing about this situation is that we can no longer rely on many of our politicians to do right by our country. So who?

Someone told me that it's the decent, honest Filipinos who are usually going abroad. They have big dreams of earning big bucks but unlike many of our leaders, they are willing to work hard for these. But if every decent, honest Filipino leaves, who will be left in this country? The same ones who made it necessary for many of our countrymen to leave?

I am struck by what one doctor said when she was asked why she was staying. "To make a difference," she said. And that makes sense to me: if you have to stay in the Philippines, you will need to have the determination to make a difference. This country is not for the faint-hearted.

Regards,
Chit Estella