18,529 pass nursing board exam

MANILA, Philippines — The country has more than 18,000 new nurses, the Professional Regulation Commission (PRC) announced yesterday.

The PRC said 18,529 of the 24,903 examinees passed the Philippine Nurse Licensure Examination (NLE) held in various parts of the country two weeks ago.

Abigail Ramirez, a graduate of St. Paul’s University in Dumaguete, topped the examination with a score of 90 percent.

Jezrel Alijid of the West Visayas State University (WVSU) and Melchor Pimente Jr. of the St. Louis University were tied at second spot. The two both obtained a score of 89.80 percent.

WVSU graduate Emmanuel John Aggabao, Jade Alexie Aranda of the University of Sto. Tomas, Michelle Joy Lim of Tarlac State University, Nikka Parulan of Dr. Yanga College and Adrian Amil and Antonette Feliz Calimot of the Cebu Normal University shared the third place.

The government had earlier announced that it would raise the annual deployment cap for healthcare workers as there are now additional registered nurses.

A deployment cap was imposed when the COVID pandemic broke out in 2020, to ensure that the country would have enough healthcare workers, especially nurses.

Meanwhile, over 300,000 applications from Filipino healthcare workers were received during a recent recruitment mission for deployment in Saskatchewan, Canada. The delegation was led by Saskatchewan Health Minister Paul Merriman.– Pia Lee-Brago