Filipino Nurses and their Migration

Introduction

It is not a secret that the Philippines is one of the largest supplier of nurses to the world, with over 25%
of all nurses in the United States alone being of Filipino descent. This is not a surprise given the country’s
focus on education, the high level of English proficiency, and the strong work ethic ingrained in Filipino
culture. Filipino nurses are admired globally because of their working qualities and incredible passion
and dedication to their profession. The Philippines’ overseas population is an enormous source of
remittances, that helps the national economy greatly. Even during the pandemic, Filipinos living abroad
sent USD 2.9 billion home. Meanwhile, Philippine nurses working in public hospitals and government
offices had to protest for decades before they secured an increase to their pay.

With this kind of system, the number of Filipino nurses leaving the country are high.

Recently, Philippine president Ferdinand Marcos Jr. revealed that there is a high demand for Filipino
nurses in Singapore, with the number of job openings said to be in the thousands. Because of this, more
nurses are set to leave the country especially now that travel restrictions eases.

A study was conducted to know if working abroad was really part of the plan for nurses after graduation
or they were just left with no choice given the treatment they were getting.

Below is a Pie graph showing respondent’s answer to the question ‘Was migrating to another country a
plan from the beginning?’
Interpretation

The pie graph shows that the answer ‘yes’ represented by the color yellow dominates the graph by
82.1% compared to the answer ‘no’ represented by the color blue that only got 17.9%. This simply
means that leaving the country and migrating was in the plan of Filipino nurses from the very beginning.
The low salary, lack of resources, and limited social benefits in the country has encourage these nurses
to push their luck abroad. They were convinced that working abroad is much more worth it with the
better working conditions, job security and advancement, avenues to improve skills, and travel
opportunities. With the benefits of working abroad, nursing students now are studying nursing not to
serve the people of the country but to leave the country to improve their quality of life and socio-
economic status.

Implication

So there are several factors that encourage Filipino nurses to leave their home country, including
constrained access to educational and career opportunities, low pay, a lack of resources, limited
benefits, political instability, and absence of safety. Although they can help the country’s economy,
nurse migration also affect our country in the negative way because nurses are resigning from their job
to migrate and if all nurses resigned, who else will be left in every hospitals. One thing the government
should work into is to ensure occupational health and safety policies that enable well-being, redesigning
jobs to optimize the contribution of older nurses, maintaining a pay system that rewards experience and
developing succession plans and avoiding age discrimination. In this way, the number of nurses that will
go overseas will lower and they won’t have to be away from their loved ones anymore.