ILOILO CITY, Philippines ? The Commission on Higher Education (CHEd) in Western Visayas is calling for the regulation of the taking of the nursing licensure examination by repeaters or those who failed to pass the test.

Dr. Rex Casiple, CHEd assistant regional director, said repeaters pulled down the passing percentage of 16 nursing schools in Western Visayas, which have otherwise performed well during the November 2009 nursing board examinations.

Citing data from the Professional Regulatory Commission (PRC), Casiple said 4,028 out of 8,047 examinees in Western Visayas or 50 percent passed the examination, the result of which was released on February 1. The regional passing rate is 10.28 percent higher than the national passing average of 39.72 percent.

Sixteen of the 21 nursing schools in the region (76 percent) were high performers or performing above the national average, said Casiple.

Ten of the 48 examinees, who were among the top 10 passers, were from Western Visayas, including Katrina Isabel Doromal of St. Paul University-Iloilo, who tied with two other examinees for fifth place with a passing grade of 86.40 percent.

Those who made it to the top 10 included five graduates from the St. Paul University-Iloilo, two from Central Philippine University, and one each from the West Visayas State University, Aklan State University and West Negros College.

But Casiple said the repeaters pulled down the regional passing average noting that the passing average of the first-takers was 60 percent while that of the repeaters was 24 percent. Only 548 of the 2,286 repeaters passed.

He said this was also true of the national passing average of 39.72 percent with the passers among first takers reaching 49.39 percent while repeaters had a national average of 26.69 percent.

Of the 94,462 examinees, who took in the nursing board in the country, 54,326 or 57.6 percent were first takers and 40,069 or 42.2 percent were repeaters, Casiple said.

He said the CHEd and PRC must formulate a policy to regulate the taking by repeaters of the board examination or require them to take refresher subjects or lessons.

Aside from the significant number of repeaters who took the examination, Casiple said the performance of nursing schools was affected by the lack of school-owned hospitals and lack of qualified faculty.

He said most of the nursing schools in Western Visayas lacked hospitals to accommodate the training of students with only six of the 21 nursing schools in the region owning a hospital.

The huge number of nursing students also require more faculty to accommodate the students.

Casiple said many of the nursing graduates have taken up nursing as a second course because of the demand for nurses abroad. Many of them were not fully trained as a nurse because some of the subjects taken in their first course were credited to nursing subject requirements, he said.