Problems of unemployment amongst graduates of nursing in the Philippines are being continually dealt with by the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE). Their most current recommendation is to persuade nurses to take on entrepreneurship.
The increased supply of the Philippines’ nursing graduates has become a quite a problem not only for the nation but for those families who have nurses for their sons or daughters. The craze to send an offspring to get a nursing degree for college was rooted to the high demand for nurses, to include foreign nurses, that developed countries have announced a couple of years back.
The nation currently holds 287,000 underemployed nurses, based on the Professional Regulation Commission, with several of them functioning as volunteers for duty who receive no pay while several others got work which is not relevant to the course.
Due to the flooding of nurses in the nation, the Labor Department stated that nurses ought to think about setting up a business by putting together clinics as well as small pharmacies.
Rosalinda Baldoz, secretary of Labor, mentioned that the department’s vision for nurses who are unemployed is not only so that they can acquire fruitful wage employment. Running and maintaining their own private nursing clinics also provides ongoing income, she said.
Employing overseas nurses in well-known foreign places such as the United States of America (USA) as well as the United Kingdom (UK) is now reduced due to the worldwide financial crisis, as stated by Baldoz.
In a current briefing, Ofelia Domingo, the Director of Labor, is pleased to say that in the CARAGA region, particularly Surigao del Norte, 25 nurses have determined to put up their own private “entreprenurse” clinic. The mentioned nurses have been part of the program Nurses Assigned in Rural Service (NARS) by DOLE for a period of six months. The program supplies an increase in health clinics in some rural areas. Aside from that, it also gave the participants preparation with entrepreneurial skills.
The DOLE supplies financial aid to the mentioned nurses to enable them to properly put up their own businesses. The financial support from DOLE was a sum of P1.068 million. P850,000 of this quantity was set aside for equipment as well as clinic fixtures whereas theP217,000 will serve as guarantee to be collected from the associates.
The clinics that these nurses have put up are currently running. These provide several services which includes: consultation; laboratory procedures like complete blood count, random blood sugar, fasting blood sugar, stool exam, urine exam, and sputum exam; parenteral medication; private duty nursing; intravenous fluid (IVF) insertion; tetanus toxoid/ATS injection; wound cleaning and dressing; nebulization; oxygen administration; catheterization; thermal therapy; and foot and palm reflex. Badoz further went to say that the nurses are also considering putting up a mini-pharmacy.
