Turtle_Dog

Looks like a scam friend, IMO. The NLE is given twice a year in each of the PRC regional offices (or the cities where the offices are located) simultaneously. The date for the exam which she gave you is correct, but the application for the exam ended sometime in April, and review classes started as early as March. The only reason she would be asking for financial help now if she intends to sit for the exam either late November or early December. The fee for the exam itself is 1,000 pesos or more, not including the other necessary requirements, which may or may not amount to at least another 1,000. The current average fee for a review class is about 12,000 pesos which includes all lectures, materials and the final coaching sessions. If your friend intends to have her review in an another town (she may have residence in a place far from the review center/exam center), she will have to spend for board and lodging for at least 2 months, which is the average length of review classes till the exam day. I dont believe the Zamboanga PRC office will only have one instance of the NLE happening this year, and if it really is true, she should have asked for your help months ago, since the new deadlines for applying to take the exam is 6-8 weeks before the exam date itself.

West Visayas State University and St Paul's University in Iloilo requires an entrance exam, and the last I heard is that they do not accept 2nd coursers, but I might be wrong. Better check out their homepages. Technically a 2nd courser is anyone who takes up another degree after finishing or graduating an equal but prior bachelor's degree. In some schools 2nd coursers can be fast tracked, if the subjects/units in their prior degrees are credited, and start in the 2nd year or even 3rd year level of the degree. However, since your degree comes from overseas, you might find it hard to have your subjects credited, even if they might be superior or better. ( Even for locals it is hard. I transferred from a top university to a smaller college, i got only about 10 out 50 credited.) About practicing: Guess you might have an idea for the reciprocity thing. Even US RNs cant practice in the PI if they cant pass the NLE and get the license. The nearest thing you can even volunteer for is to be a nursing aide, and i dont think you would want that. So you really have to wait for the BSN to be able to take the exam, and taking the exam itself has its own problems, you being an American citizen. I'll post something again if something that fits your requirements comes up.:wink2:

jerro: I think you meant the list is wrong. I could say that all got the same list from the PRC, so it means that somebody somewhere had the wrong code for the school for at least 2 graduates. Since the PRC only processes the codes submitted, the most likely explanation is that someone from the school did not get it right so they were not credited to the school. In any case the current passing rate is based on less than 30 examinees from the school, and i would assume that they are the first batch ever to take the exam, based on the list. It is something to be proud of, but of course, the original poster would have to consider that the school has just graduated the first batch ever, and that the track record of passing the NLE still needs to be established. Would you care to post how many graduates in total did the school have last school year, so we could track in the future how many of those will pass the NLE later on? The PRC list covers only those who took the exams, but not how many actual graduates from each school.

They do have a track record now. I think someone has posted a link to the passing rates of each school in another thread. I believe this school has a current passing rate of 44% where 8 out of 18 graduates passed the NLE

Was just asking since the same thing happened to my friend while he was at St Lukes. :) He resigned than rather work with them. He opted to go out since first, he was rather far from home, and second, he got a better job as a medical transcriptionist. On Topic: Maybe you can claim you did work/train for that hospital, but was unable to finish your contract, so you can't produce a certification?

85,80,81,79,84 = 81.8% took the exam right after graduation, didnt bother to review or read much before taking the NLE

Hmm... let me guess...St Luke's ? :)

It is wonderful training, suzanne, if the students get it, or get through it. :wink2: I believe suzanne has already answered most questions in different threads or different posts on about why things are done that way in the Phils, and why things are not done correctly now. So I would not be be answering to questions asked about my post. My own observation is that most experienced clinical instructors (that I know) would like to have things done the way they were taught in the past; they push to limit students accepted in nursing schools and try to wear down those who are wholly unsuited to be nurses, to either put them out of the program or if the student has some potential, bring it out of the student to be molded. But they dont own the schools, they can not dictate policy on accepting and training students and if they do, somehow they are overriden by school owner/president/trustees. They know from experience how best to train nurses, but the politics and economics of today determines how and who they train. So if they disagree, they are out of a job, at worst or at best, relegated to a position that can not to do anything about it. Even at my school, which was once ranked as a top 5 nursing school in the Phils, old/veteran clinical instructors have been set aside or denied promotion if they make too much noise about the direction the college of nursing is taking, which is currently turning out mediocre nurses due to increasing number of enrollees. The school instead hires new clinical instructors, with little or no experience, who are amenable to whatever policy the school has in place. Granted that the new clinical instructors can teach, but still, they just dont have the tricks, the techniques that one gets from experience. One particular instructor I know who was clinical coordinator then, and was in line to become the dean, once disagreed with the policies for admitting students and made her objections known; some years ago she took leave to finish her Masters in teaching (she already finished her MAN) and vacated her position as clinical coordinator. She assumed she would be back in her position, as her leave only took a semester, once she graduated but she found herself back to being just an clinical instructor. Somehow someone higher up took notice of her policies in admitting and dropping students, which was very strict and rigid, and appointed someone else to take her job. Soon after that enrollees in the college doubled and some regulations were relaxed to accommodate those that were not even qualified to be students in the college. Now the school is having difficulty in keeping the quality of graduates high and the passing rate of the school in the NLE, which used to be in the low 80's to the high 90's, has dropped to the 40's and 50's. Just another story of the woes facing the nursing profession in phils.

Hmm student nurses in the phils first assist in delivering babies (in the hospital) and then allowed to handle at least 5 deliveries under the supervision of a clinical instructor and midwife, if it is a home delivery (not allowed anymore as of this writing) or doctors. The premise is that nurses should be able, in a pinch, to actually deliver babies in the absence of doctors or midwives. Scrubbing in for operations/procedures allows students to better familiarize themselves with instrumentation and the procedure itself; most procedures, without student participation, have the nurses circulating, while aides and interns assist/scrubs with the surgeons. These are requirements set down by the Professional Regulation Commission (PRC) in order for a nursing graduate to sit to take the exam for a license; they can not be waived and in some cases heavily scrutinized for irregularities. IV therapy: there is now a law that requires nurses in the phils to have license or certification that states he/she completed an IV therapy course in order to insert IVs and high-risk IV meds. Back then nurses just simply insert when ordered. Students are not allowed to do so now, and therefore are not taught to insert IVs, much less give IV meds. They now have to wait till they have a nurse license, then they finish an IV therapy training course before they can even stick in a needle, and the license/certificate is given after completing an X number of insertions, supervised/witnessed by a doctor or IV therapist. Most hospitals now observe this law; staff nurses are forbidden to insert IV lines until they are certified, and have to call for a doctor or a licensed colleague if they need an IV inserted or re-inserted. As for the other stuff, like foley catheters and NG tubes, students do that too; however when medical interns are around, like in the teaching hospital where I was doing rotations as a student, some procedures are left to the interns to do so they can practice too. Only in cases such as where an intern passes on a NG tube insertion are student nurses are allowed to do the procedure. The Related Learning Experience (RLE) notebooks, which all students must have, have all the procedures that a nurse should be able to do listed there; students have to either seen/assisted in the procedure being done, or have actually performed the procedure by themselves (with some supervision, of course). The clinical instructor has to countersign each entry in the notebooks and the PRC can demand to examine the RLE notebooks if they see any irregularities in the students records. As for telemetry, well most hospitals can not afford it. So few students ever get trained. But students will go check everything that is ordered. When doctor's orders require hourly monitoring of vital signs as well as fluid intake and output, a student will go check each hour, even when a nursing aide is around, because that is what is required of them. Telemetry would be spoiling them, in my opinion. :wink2: To remain on topic: It still depends, on some degree, on clinical instructors if students will be able to do all that I mentioned. And experience clinical instructors have or will find ways for students to learn.

Unfortunately thats where we are in the Phils, stuck between the 2 extremes. I have experienced being under both types of CI's; the new/young grad with little or no experience, and the veteran grand dame, who starts each and every sentence, "In my day, nurses/students were... " and proceeds to berate you or anybody else who has the gall to irritate her with questions. :chuckle Mind you, I would still prefer the veterans, if they are willing to teach, of course. The new grads, well, I would rather have them go work first. Experience is not something to be taken for granted.

I have seen the draft curriculum for the 5 year program (both drafts actually) and the year added is supposed to add a rotation to specialized areas or add more hours in the wards, depending on what is available/what the student chooses (this may be due to the affiliating institutions available). Aside from that, the additional subjects/courses focus on research, management and specialized nursing practices. I can not recall whether the students really have a choice on choosing a specialized area for their rotations, but the rationale that I read in the ADPCN memo(?) was that the added year was to make sure that students gained more than enough time to be proficient in nursing care, in other words, more time in the wards, more time to practice nursing. My dean is sitting on the fence with the idea; she agrees that the added time could make for more proficient nurses, but the cost of another year for students to sutdy makes her uneasy, considering nursing is an expensive course. She also has wondered how to find clinical instructors who are qualified to teach specialized nursing practices, considering she barely has enough CI's with MAN degrees to go around, and her hands are tied when employing new CI's, since the College HRD head and the College President does the hiring. Those reasons alone make her protest the implementation, since the time to implement is rather short considering the changes as presented in the drafts.

I find it better to them have their way for the moment. It's the easiest thing to do, and you dont have to suffer much. Just kidding. Some staff nurses would like to find out how much they can get away with. Its up to you on how much will you let them do so. Just do your job and show them what you can and can not do. It doesnt pay to be a smart-aleck, nor to be always in their "good graces," either.The former just asks for possible hostility, the latter, more abuse later on. Neither helps in making good working relationships. Personally I found it amusing that if I show an air of confidence in who I am and what I do, just a shade off of being thought of as arrogant, I am able to avoid being abused and disrespected by staff nurses. I have another good trait. I am a can-do-anything type of person, and I show that each and everytime. So I am able to make myself indispensable to them, even respected at times. And it helps to let them see that other people in the hospital think highly of you when you change shifts, ward assignments. It limits what they think they can heap unto you. I always tell my friends to: Keep your mouth shut when you dont need it. This refers to talking when you are supposed to talk, and keeping tact and/or silence when appropriate. What you say shows who you are, and if you cant add anything worth adding, just listen. This often works best with staff nurses who like to make tirades and rants, and criticise everyone, including you.:) You just might get to have an insight to what ticks them off, and thus avoid doing just that in the future.

have the same question myself. the local PNA chapter told me that i have to get it from the office where i submitted my application for NLE. maybe because our PERRC's are on file there. but when my brother took and passed his Elec. Eng board exams, he took it in manila, but applied for his license in iloilo. a reason they told me is that nurses are more numerous, so it would not be easy to cross-check, transfer, etc. our records. oh well, ill certainly ask the BON chairman about that after the oath-taking ceremenonies

the dead line has been announced. it will be on oct 17. but mind you it will be subject to change if the PRC feels it needs to do so, considering the number of examinees this November NLE

please check out www.bonphilippines.org its the newly put up website by the BON, i think there is a list for the requirements there. btw there is a thread here somewhere where someone put up the requirements