Nurse shortage troubles Cebu hospitals
CEBU CITY –– A shortage of nurses has troubled private and public hospitals in Cebu, forcing some patients to wait extended hours in emergency rooms or hospital hallways.
“There has really been a shortage of nurses and this problem has haunted us for quite some time now,” Joseph Stephen Descallar, president of the Philippine Nurses Association Cebu chapter, told the Inquirer over the phone.
He said the ideal nurse-to-patient ratio is 1:10 to 12 patients. But at present, a nurse is forced to attend an entire ward, which has about 30 to 40 patients.
Descallar said low salary has been the reason many nurses opt to work abroad or enter the Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) sector.
“BPOs open health accounts while other countries such as Japan and London have massive recruitment of nurses. Hence, many of our nurses here decide to transfer to where there are bigger salaries,” he said.
Nurses working in private hospitals receive a monthly salary of at least P13,000, while those in the government get at least P18,000.
The best way to address this problem, he said, is to increase the salaries of nurses and give them enough benefits.
“We are not holding them. It’s their right to look for better sources of income. But if we only give them better salaries, they could have stayed,” Descallar said.
“I just hope that nurses too, especially the new ones, would serve Cebu hospitals. Nursing is about service and giving care. At least, they give care to Cebuanos before others,” he added.
In November 2019, the Senate approved on third and final reading the proposed P4.1 trillion budget to grant pay increases to nurses in government health institutions.
Like public school teachers, government nurses may soon get higher wages after the Senate amended the proposed 2020 budget and increased their base pay to Salary Grade 15.
Sen. Panfilo Lacson said the 2020 budget had a new special provision stating that nurses should have a base pay of P30,531 a month in compliance with a Supreme Court decision./lzb
