The Philippines needs to arrest a decline in nurses that has halved manpower in some hospitals at a time when the health system is under strain from the pandemic, a medical group said Wednesday.
The government must come up with programs to increase the number of student nurses and nursing schools, Jaime Almora, head of the country's largest group of hospitals told a Senate hearing.
Migration and the decreasing number of nursing students is contributing to the supply shortfall. The phaseout of underpeforming nursing schools also played a part, said Almora, president of the Philippine Hospitals Association.
"A program to increase the number of nursing schools and student enrollees in nursing colleges is hereby requested if only to assure supply of nurses in the coming years," he said.
Currently, private hospitals operate at 30% to 50% of their nursing manpower, he said.
Many government offices are employing nurses only to do non-nursing jobs, further lowering the supply of nurses available to take care of COVID-19 patients, he said.
Almora appealed to government agencies to lend their nurses doing non-nursing jobs to hospitals, saying that "before the last defenses of this war, your hospitals will be totally overrun."
He said government must act now since due to the COVID quarantines, the next batch of nursing graduates will not come until 2023. He said the graduates would also most likely look for work abroad.
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