BEYOND MIGRATION
In international conferences, Ms. Ruth Padilla, president of the Philippine Nurses Association, has been told several times:
'It seems your government is encouraging the export'--masakit pakinggan--'of your nurses and health professionals.' " In fact, she has even heard stories of the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration "asking other countries if they need nurses" and other health professionals.
And as far as Dr. Gene Alzona Nisperos, secretary general of Health Alliance for Democracy (HEAD), is concerned, the administration of President Gloria Arroyo clearly has an "unwritten labor-export policy," and should be held "fully accountable for abandoning its responsibility to its health workers and to the Filipino people."
And while complaints keep coming about Pinoy health professionals being funneled out of the national health-care system, job opportunities in other countries continue to multiply: in August the POEA reported that Saudi Arabia is in need of 5,000 nurses; the United Kingdom needs 17,000 Filipino nurses; and Australia is looking for 20,000 doctors who are willing to serve in the outback.
The "exodus" of Filipino health professionals dominated the discussion during the Medical Summit organized by the Philippine Medical Association (PMA) on September 24. Organized jointly with the University of the Philippines-National Institutes of Health, Association of Philippine Medical Colleges, Philippine College of Surgeons, Philippine College of Physicians, and the Department of Health, the summit gathered the "stakeholders" to come up with "short-term and long-term solutions" to the problems facing "the wounded profession." It was time, said Dr. Jaime Galvez Tan of the UP-NIH, that the medical professions spoke "as one voice."
Malpractice fears
Aside from the migration of health workers for jobs abroad, the possibility of Congress passing a malpractice law was also tackled. In fact, the session on malpractice drew one of the largest numbers of participants. Dr. Albert Rebosa, who moderated the session, said that there really is no need for a malpractice law in the country; "the Revised Penal Code, Civil Code provisions on human relations, quasidelicts, and damages; and [the] Professional Regulation Commission's Rules and Regulations, including the Code of Medical Ethics, apply in cases of medical malpractice/negligence."
He added that while bills on patients' rights filed in Congress "have laudable intentions … would the safety and well-being of the Filipino patients be ensured by [their] passage?… Do we really need a medical-malpractice bill or a legislation of patients' rights? Wouldn't a declaration of such rights be enough?"
In addition, Rebosa said that actual malpractice in the Philippines is "presumed" to be "only a mere" 0.00003 percent.
"Deteriorating public perception"
Another session looked at "how badly tarnished the image of the physician is." Dr. Jaime Montoya, who moderated the session, identified a number of factors that have contributed to the "deteriorating public perception of the medical profession." These include poor wages and working conditions for doctors, patients' dissatisfaction (the perception of
doctors as "unfeeling, impersonal, unconcerned for the welfare of patients, and charging very high fees"), and the "felt conflict of interests between the senior doctors and young doctors." These, Montoya added, have also not been helped by the "bad press" doctors are receiving. He said: "Doctor bashing became an important part of several talk shows and carried several paragraphs in some newspaper columns--mostly justifying why it was [necessary] to pass the malpractice bill."
All of the above issues, the participants to the summit agreed, are both cause and consequence of the problems of the medical profession. The PMA and NIH are one in saying that "out-of-the-box" solutions need to be made. Some of these could be seen in the strategic solutions drafted by Galvez Tan (See "Letting Them Go," MEDICAL OBSERVER, August 2005). While groups like HEAD support the various solutions being proposed, they are vocal in insisting that the national government should take greater responsibility for the crisis. Unless the government does something more concrete (HEAD's first proposal is to make the government raise the national health budget to five percent of the gross national product, as recommended by the World Health Organization), several of the solutions being proposed would be palliatives at best, because the problem is "systemic [and] long standing." Jin Paul de Guzman
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