The Philippine government is addressing the need for more nurses in the country as well as in countries seeking to hire Filipino healthcare professionals, the Private Sector Advisory Council-Healthcare Sector Group (PSAC-HSG) said on Wednesday, June 20.
President Ferdinand R. Marcos Jr. met with the PSAC-HSG and other concerned agencies at the Malacañan Palace to discuss updates on its recommendations for the establishment of a resilient and responsive healthcare system.
“Just happy to say Mr. President that we continue building momentum for what we call clinical care associates program. The CCA program as you might recall is our attempt to help the thousands of underboard nurses, people who have graduated from nursing degree, but for one reason or another, they did not pass the test during their time,” said PSAC Healthcare Sector Lead Paolo Borromeo.
“And with the CHED’s leadership and guidance, with Chair Popoy’s championship, we developed the program to encourage both public sector and the private sector to look for the nursing underboards in their respective institutions and to try to enroll them in a review program so that they can take the test, which the next one I believe is in November,” he added.
According to Borromeo, the first batch of 457 Clinical Care Associates (CCAs) has been matched to seven higher educational institutions (HEIs) for board reviews.
The recruitment is ongoing for the second batch of CCAs for the May 2025 board examinations.
“To date, we have 457 CCAs out of 1,000 that we have budget for. So, we continue to look for more CCAs around the country. It’s a work in progress, I think 457 additional nurses, assuming all of them passed will be a big addition to our list of nurses,” said Borromeo, who is also the President and CEO of the Ayala Healthcare Holdings Inc.
Records also show an increase in nursing board passers starting 2022 onwards as compared to the pre-Covid years due to the recalibrated curriculum.
Also, the Enhanced Master’s Degree in Nursing Program was approved for roll-out with pilot implementation in 17 HEIs by August this year.
This is in addition to the ongoing inter-agency collaboration on various programs such as bilateral labor agreements, Balik Nurse Program, and Technical Education and Skills Development Authority-Commission on Higher Education Credit Transfer.
Through the one-year accelerated Master’s program in Nursing, which was organized with CHED’s assistance, the government expects to produce more teaching personnel in nursing.
In addition, the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) and Department of Migrant Workers (DMW) have been working to come up with bilateral agreements with other countries that are willing to subsidize the education of Filipino nursing students that they can eventually hire in the future.
Authorities are also looking at local government units (LGUs) who could undertake the adopt-a-hospital program and other measures to address nursing shortage.
Currently, the government is working with Austria to carry out such arrangements. It plans to organize caravans to gather necessary information and assistance that can be provided to the hospital and training facilities on an ad hoc basis while it sets up permanent training arrangements between the Austrian hospital and the LGU partner.