Cleaning up

The day I found out that I had passed the Nursing Licensure Examination I was playing an online computer game called “World of Warcraft” (WOW) with one of my friends. It was a happy moment for me and I can still remember it clearly.

Sadly, the friend I was playing with wasn’t so lucky. I didn’t know how to tell him (or rather how my avatar could tell his avatar) that that was all right. I began to type, “OK lang ’yan, wala din namang trabaho ang mga nurse ngayon …” but  elected not to send it since it was non-therapeutic. Still, the thought lingered in my mind: What happens now?

Not too long ago we had nothing to think about except the board exams. And before that, we had to make sure we were qualified to take the exams by completing the requirements, along with many other adversities. Sure, passing the exams was a reason to celebrate, but I was celebrating yesterday, not tomorrow.

I knew darker days lay ahead. The United States was in the midst of trying to reform their health care system (again). US President Barack Obama wanted to solve their nursing shortage from within instead of importing foreign nurses. Other countries were not accepting new graduates and required a minimum of one year’s experience. This created a domino effect no one wanted. With the foreign-bound staff nurses choosing to keep their local jobs, the 30,000 new registered nurses of Batch 2009 were basically left with just their Professional Regulation Commission licenses to be proud of.

For a few months after I got my license, I kept playing WOW. Every now and then I would meet with friends and listen to their job-hunting experiences. They would print their resumés—10, 20 copies—but no luck. Those who did get accepted to hospitals did so as “paying volunteers.”

I never tried applying for a hospital job. There were just too many of us. And even after getting that much needed experience, it would still be an uphill battle to find a job in another country. After four years of sacrifices, the last thing we had to do was drink from the glass of opportunity and not let it slip. But it did, and we couldn’t do anything to prevent it. Four years of sacrifice lay on the floor, wasted.

After a few more months, hope was replaced with depression, anger, finding someone to blame: “It’s our parents’ fault; they forced us to take up nursing!” “It’s the hospitals’ fault; they are understaffed and yet they don’t employ us. We even have to pay them to get some work experience!” “It’s the government’s fault; it should have regulated nursing schools to properly manage the volume of graduates!”

In the midst of all this, no one bothered to clean up the spill everyone collectively made. Bigger batches of succeeding graduates celebrated momentarily, unaware that they would soon slip from the spill that was left on the floor. Nursing had become a big business for schools, review centers, training facilities, hospitals, even the government.

Many of my friends decided to work as call center agents. Some chose to go to medical school or graduate school. A few began to sell beauty products in a system that looks like a pyramid scam.

Those were depressing times for me. I had always thought that our generation would be the one to turn our country around (and right now, I still want to believe it).

The country currently has a surplus of over 200,000 unemployed men and women in the nursing profession. Such a huge workforce cannot be employed as staff nurses.

We need to admit the following facts: One, most people who took up nursing took it for the wrong reasons (including me). Two, those who are already registered nurses will not be able to practice their profession. Three, and regardless of where they will eventually work, they can still have a positive impact on the overall health situation of our country.

The 200,000 graduates who are in this predicament must have had their dream jobs before they went into nursing—start a restaurant, become a lawyer, play in a band, etc.  Now is their chance to follow those dreams. They can combine the knowledge, skills and attitudes they acquired about health during their four-year nursing education with their dream job to form an innovative way of providing service.

I have a friend who applies the same aseptic techniques she learned in nursing to baking cakes and pastries. She also makes it a habit to make her creations healthy by not adding preservatives.

Another friend trains community health workers on how to use electronic medical records in their respective rural health centers. A classmate in graduate studies works as a telehealth nurse.

As for me, I am researching and developing eLearning video games that aim to increase health awareness and education. All those hours playing WOW are finally paying off.

What I am trying to say is that we cannot rely forever on other nations for our country’s long-term progress. We have the capacity to make this country prosper by improving it from within.

Graduating high school students should now give careful thought to the courses they will pursue in college.  If they choose the more popular courses, they will have more competitors for employment. I suggest that they follow their dreams because that is how they can become the best that they can be. As long as they love what they are doing, they are assured of a return on their investment.

To my fellow nursing graduates: We have a chance to have an impact on our nation without having to leave it. That does not look like a bad deal at all.

It’s time to clean up the mess we made.

Isidor F. Cardenas, RN, 22, is an eHealth nurse at the UP Manila National Telehealth Center.