By Mai Gevera

Davao City (4 October) -- After the Nursing Board Exam controversy in 2006 that exposed some anomalies of nursing review centers, the Board of Nursing has now become more watchful and stricter on their policies.

BON chairperson Carmencita Matias-Abaquin during the 2007 Nursing Oathtaking held yesterday in this city announced that the new set of licensed nurses who passed the recent exam are duly recognized and cannot be questioned.

Implemented in the latest examination, the BON came up with tighter rules such as housing the members of the BON for 10 days before the exam day so as to avoid any form of leakage.

Among the other boards under the Professional Regulation Commission, it is only the BON that added two more members in the said group.

The said move was a result of President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo's directive for good governance especially in the nursing board.

Executive Order 220 directed for the creation of a good governance body for the nursing profession.

"We considered 2006 as a crisis for the nursing board that is why the BON has to change its course and restore the integrity of this profession," she said.

The BON is now focused in pushing for the three Ps namely: patriotism, professionalism, and personal governance.

Abaquin cited the need to upgrade the level of the nursing profession in the country. " We must do something about the fast-turn over of nurses, lack of qualified faculty, mushrooming of schools, inadequate hospitals and affiliations, increasing number of students, and unmanaged migration of nurses."

Nationwide, there are a total of 40,721 passers or newly licensed nurses out of the almost 80,000 examiners in the 2007 nursing exam. Of the 13,338 re-takers who were required to take back the exam for CGFNS visa application, only 9,938 passed.

In the region, about 1,091 new nurses took oath yesterday, amongst them is the 9th placer Florencia Campus of Arriesgado College, a practicing doctor in the Department of Health.