No retesting of nurses, Philippines says

The Philippine government has decided not to compel the nurses who passed a fraudulent nursing board examination to retake the test, opting instead to recompute their scores after invalidating answers to the questions that had been leaked.


The decision, officials said, was a "fair and impartial way" to resolve the scandal that has tainted the reputation of the nurses, who are some of the most sought-after caregivers in the world.

The Professional Regulation Commission, which administers the board exams, said it invalidated the 90 questions, out of the 500 test questions, that had been leaked and recomputed their averages based on the new scores.

"It's fair to all," commission chairman Leonor Tripon Rosero told a congressional panel investigating the scandal on Wednesday. "That's already fair to everyone, even to those who failed."

More than 17,000 of the 42,000 examinees passed the exams, which were held in June.

Nursing graduates had opposed retaking the test, first suggested by nursing educators, who argued that retesting was the only way to repair the country's damaged credibility.

There have been concerns that the tainted results would damage the image of Filipino nurses, especially at a time when other countries are producing more and more of their own nurses.

The Philippines is among the top sources of nurses in the world, supplying more nurses to the United States than any other country.

Members of the June batch of students had been turned away by hospitals, here and abroad, officials had said. But on Thursday, two government hospitals announced that it would now hire nurses from this batch.

"We want to give them a chance," Ninfa Ignacia, a hospital administrator, said.