Bill granting additional risk pay for nurse educators pushed

Ilocos Norte 1st District Rep. Ferdinand Alexander “Sandro” Marcos. Photo by Yummie Dingding / PPA POOL

Ilocos Norte Rep. Sandro Marcos, the eldest son of President Marcos, is seeking recognition for the hazards faced by nurse educators, who are seemingly “deemed less deserving of benefits than nurses,” even as he has filed a bill that would grant them additional risk welfare pay as an incentive to remain in the profession.

Marcos, House senior deputy majority leader, filed House Bill No. 9607, which he said could help address the country’s shortage of nurses and nurse educators in the country, noting that “the real problem lies on the fact that only about half of them are active or practicing their profession.”

“Hence, part of the solution lies in coming up with attractive recruitment and retention benefit packages,” he pointed out.

But he observed that the issue of benefits for nurse teachers was “somewhat complicated” where they are not considered public health-care workers and are not covered by institutionalized risk benefits under the magna carta for public health-care workers.

“This is obviously an anomalous situation where nurse educators who are responsible for producing our country’s corps of nurses are deemed less deserving of benefits than nurses who are mere products of their efforts,” he said.

According to Marcos, nurse educators were not always confined to the classroom. “When working in a hospital or community environment, they are exposed to almost the same hazards as nurses in the field, who are deemed entitled to risk benefits since they are officially considered public health-care workers,” he said.

“Clinical education setting, as opposed to classroom environment, exposes nurse educators to a wide variety of physical, chemical, biological and psychosocial hazards,” he added.

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