Recruiter to continue hiring nurses despite US row

March 27, 2007

Updated 22:03:38 (Mla time)
Leila Salaverria
Inquirer

THE US-BASED SentosaCare will continue to recruit nurses from the Philippines, despite the company's ongoing legal battle with Filipino nurses who allegedly left their jobs in health care facilities in New York City.

"We still have great confidence in Filipino nurses. We've had very good experience with many Filipino nurses. They are hardworking when they come to America. And they are able to climb the corporate ladder. We take great pride in that," said SentosaCare's chief operating officer Bent Philipson in a press conference Tuesday.

In September last year, 28 Filipino nurses alleged that they were duped into working in hospitals in New York City without receiving the pay and benefits that the Sentosa Recruitment Agency (SRA), SentosaCare's local counterpart, had promised them.

The nurses, most of whom were licensed doctors in the Philippines (including medical board topnotcher Elmer Jacinto), filed a complaint with the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration and with the National Labor Relations Commission that led to the suspension of SRA's license.

A month later, the suspension was lifted. In a privilege speech, Sen. Aquilino Pimentel Jr. named former Presidential Chief of Staff Michael Defensor as SRA's padrino (godfather).

Meanwhile, several nursing home employers in New York filed labor and administrative complaints against the 28 Filipinos for not honoring their contracts and endangering the lives of the patients they left behind.

Of the 28 Filipino nurses who left their jobs, 10 have pleaded not guilty to conspiracy and child endangerment charges, including Jacinto.

According to Philipson, the 28 nurses who left the health care facilities are only a small portion of the many Filipino nurses that SentosaCare has successfully placed in the United States.

He also defended Defensor who was criticized for having intervened on behalf of SentosaCare.

Philipson said SentosaCare officials only wrote to President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo because the Philippine consul officials in New York refused to listen to their side. The letter was referred to Defensor.

SentosaCare officials claimed that they asked Consul General Cecilia Rebong to conduct an investigation of the incident and to talk to other Filipinos. However, Rebong refused to heed their request.

In spite of what happened, Philipson said SentosaCare would continue to focus on recruiting nurses only from the Philippines. The company also refused to be affected by the recent controversy on the leakage in the nursing licensure exam.

Philipson said it was up to Philippine officials to resolve any issue and SentosaCare would abide by their decision.

Francis Luyun, SRA chief executive officer, said the agency was not suffering from any backlash from the controversy stirred by the 28 Filipino nurses.

There is no dearth of applicants, Luyun said.

There are 450 nurses in the Philippines awaiting deployment to the United States. They are just waiting for their visa, he added.

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Advantages of Hiring Filipino Nurses

Positives:
You will get a nurse on your staff who is very pleasant, possess a good work ethic, loyal, family oriented, and grateful for the opportunity.
Instead of contributing to the upward spiral with regards to salaries, your healthcare facility can legally guarantee positions to be filled for a pre-determined period. Locking in a nurse for a two- or three-year contract alleviates a lot of recruiting-effort anxiety required to land suitable candidates and increases the pool of available candidates in the market, which will in due course decrease the lateral movement by nurses to the highest bidder.
"Headhunting" nurses isn't a good idea! By utilizing the services of PhilAm, LLC you will save time and money over traditional recruiting methods and/or enlisting "traditional" nurse recruiters, which, while helping tremendously to fill open positions, contribute to the cause of increasing fixed costs for healthcare facilities by upping the ante with regards to the commensuration necessary to get a nurse to move over from another institution (and possibly to retain your existing ones), and reducing or eliminating travel nurses whose requirements for travel and accommodations severely adds to fixed costs.

No one has to re-state the obvious with regards to the market for nurses these days except to point out the severe shortage has lead to a cycle whereby nurses are moving laterally to the highest bidder, causing many sleepless nights for hospital nurse recruiters who have had to establish aggressive and exhaustive recruiting methods to find suitable staff.

Imagine having five nurses leave your healthcare facility to work at "Hospital A." {Of course we can understand the primary reason nurses move: the compensation package.} This starts the cycle in motion which forces your institution to replace those five nurses, perhaps from "Hospital B", which creates the same problem for Hospital B, who in turn raids Hospital C for five nurses and the on and on until the cycle spins out of control much to the chagrin of recruiting managers and upper management at healthcare facilities nationwide.

Taken from: http://philamllc.com/advantages.html
vantages of hiring Filipino nurses through PhilAm, LLC. Filipino nurses, Philippines recruiting, Filipina, nursing shortage, Allied Healthcare professionals, foreign recruitment, international recruiting, ilities, hospitals.

Nurse Care Review Center Philippines

We have been in the service for the past fifteen years and the pioneer review center in the Visayas and Mindanao regions. We are the first and only review center in Davao City were most the of the review centers are in Manila. We have gained expertise in conducting highly-effective, quality programs with the best Manila Professional Reviewers and has maintained a consistent passing rate of 95%. Moreover, NCRC encourages professional and spiritual values through our series of empowerment sessions. Here at NCRC, we value not only your success in your exams but also your continuing success in your chosen profession. We balance not only the mind, but also the heart.

NRCR has four branches the Southern Philippines, namely; Cebu, Davao, Cagayan de Oro, and Zamboanga. We have helped thousands of nurses pass not only the Nursing Licensure Exams but also US based exams like CGNFS and NCLE-RN. We also helped nurses pass their English Proficiency Exams like TSE, TOEFL and IELTS.

We have gained its prestige to thousands of nurses with its updated and highly developed review programs. The programs which not only build confidence, but also designed to equip them of the theories and skills needed to pass comprehensive and mind-boggling exams.

NCRC takes on the challenge of helping nurses pass the recent and more difficult exams by maintaining its quality and standards. Now, as it launches its new program and materials, Nurse Care will surely be the most updated and most effective Review Center in the country today.

Visit their site: http://www.nursecare.com.ph/

Philippines to appeal US nurse ban

The Philippine government is to appeal a move by the US to ban some 17,000 nurses who passed the 2006 nursing examination amid allegations of mass cheating.

The United States Commission on Graduates of Foreign Nursing Schools (CGFNS) issued the temporary ban this week insisting that Filipino nurses retake sections of the 2006 examination where mass cheating took place.

President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo on Friday ordered Labor Secretary Arturo Brion to appeal the decision.

The order comes after a nursing review centre disclosed it had leaked answers to some students who took the examinations.

The scandal rocked the country's medical profession and cast a shadow over the quality of its nurses, who are in high demand overseas, especially in the United States, Europe and the Middle East.

Some 42,000 students sat the nursing examination but only 17,000 passed.

Arroyo in a statement Saturday said she had ordered the appeal to "uphold the prestige of the country�s nursing profession and continue the deployment of Filipino nurses abroad."

She said the government has already provided financial assistance to the 2006 nurses who passed to retake the exams.

The president said all officials of the Professional Regulations Commission (PRC), which overseas the examinations, found involved in scandal will be dismissed and criminally charged.

"All officials involved in the nursing exam leakage should be dismissed without benefits and criminally charged," she stressed.

The CGFNS said on its website on Thursday that "Philippine nurses who were sworn in as licensed nurses in the Philippines following their passing the compromised licensure exam of June 2006 are not eligible for a VisaScreen Certificate."

The Philadelphia-based CGFNS said that it sent a fact-finding mission to the Philippines in September 2006 to investigate the reports of irregularities in the nursing licensure exam.

The CGFNS investigation concluded that "those who received their license as a result of passing the compromised June 2006 licensure examination raises significant questions about the accurate assessment of the competencies of many of those individuals."

All foreign nurses must have a CGFNS-issued VisaScreen Certificate before being allowed to work in the US.

"The integrity of foreign licensing systems ultimately affects the health and safety of patients in the United States, a primary consideration of CGFNS in its role of evaluating candidates under US immigration law," the CGFNS said.

taken from : http://sg.news.yahoo.com/070217/1/46rg8.html