On Nursing in RP

Ours is a crazy profession.

We care like it’s love at first sight, we dig yucky stuff like it’s lovely, we risk our lives and our money like nobility’s a fad, we treat beautiful colleagues like they’re ordinary and we talk placenta over lunch like it’s corned beef.

In the nursing profession, fun comes out of pressure. That simply means no pressure means a day of boredom to us. We are no longer tagged as doctors’ assistants. We are held as a distinguished profession with more bedside time for the patients, a different way of diagnosing client conditions and big, fat salaries abroad. Man, doctors even study to be nurses nowadays! Talk about change!

There’s one more thing that’s crazy about our profession. A different kind of “crazy”.

Want to know what I’m talking about? Let’s talk about salaries and be totally honest about it. We studied to become nurses because of the paycheck that we can secure abroad. We can start with $4,000 or 200,000 pesos per month, which is good enough bucks. But, say, how about in the Philippines? Let me surprise you–whether in Bacolod, Lucena or in Metro Manila, you’ll get 6,000-9,000 pesos for a start. In one district hospital, you’ll receive 50 pesos a day. What in the world…?! And the government wants us to stay in the country?! That’s a bowl full of nuts, man (that were formerly chocolate-coated)! We are out there in filthy hospitals saving lives of hardheaded people who smoked one pack a day for 40 years and we get 50 pesos for it. I’d rather work in a call center where people get paid as much as 50,000 pesos a month! Hey, guys in suits–have you considered that?

Crazy.