THENCLEX.COM

Rep. Carolyn Maloney introduced a bill on Tuesday to forgive public and private student loans for healthcare workers on the front lines of the coronavirus pandemic.

The bill would forgive loans incurred from medical school or other professional education, and the amount of loans relieved would have "absolutely no cap," Maloney said on a press call.

Nurses, doctors, and other healthcare workers who are responding to the COVID-19 crisis would be eligible for the relief. A special commission would be formed "to determine whether an individual has made significant contributions to the medical response."

The bill defines a frontline healthcare worker as a "doctor, medical resident, medical intern, medical fellow, nurse, home health care worker, mental health professional, or other health care professional," as well as medical students providing COVID-related health services.

Laboratory staff and researchers working on testing, treatments, and vaccines are also included, as are emergency medical services (EMS) workers. The bill leaves room for the commission to further include other healthcare workers that weren't specifically mentioned.

Families and estates of healthcare workers who died due to the coronavirus would be relieved of those workers' student loans.

"We should do more than thanking them," and forgiving loans is a "concrete" way to do that, Maloney said.

Maloney, a Democrat representing parts of New York City, likened the response from healthcare workers during the coronavirus pandemic to the response from emergency first responders during the 9/11 attacks.

Other Democrats in the House have proposed more widespread student-loan forgiveness, but it would cover only public loans and have a $30,000 cap.

Maloney said she was supportive of "debt relief for all" but that a more targeted approach, like relief for healthcare workers, could have a better chance of passing Congress more quickly. "We have to get through this crisis now," she said.

Maloney is planning to introduce the relief bill for healthcare workers as a standalone bill, rather than as a provision in a larger coronavirus relief package, which could go through long and strenuous negotiations between Democrats and Republicans in Congress.

Healthcare workers would have their student loans completely forgiven in a newly proposed bill

A woman’s photo of her exhausted sister who works as a nurse has gone viral.

Laura McIntyre shared a photo on Facebook showing her sister, Caty Nixon, in tears after a particularly stressful day of working as a nurse.

“She’s gonna kill me for this pic, but can we just give it up for nurses for a minute?” McIntyre wrote.

McIntyre said the photo of Nixon was taken back in July, but it wasn’t until recently that she posted it to Facebook.

“Caty just wrapped up her fourth shift in a row,” Nixon wrote. “That’s around 53+ hours in four days. That’s not including the 1.5 hours she’s in the car each day. She usually doesn’t get a chance to eat lunch or even drink much water. (& she has to dress like a blueberry.. i mean, come on). She is so good at what she does that she often forgets how to take care of herself while she’s taking care of her patients.”

McIntyre said on the day the photo was taken, Nixon had delivered a stillborn baby.

“Have you guys ever really thought about what a labor & delivery nurse sees? They see great joy in smooth deliveries & healthy moms & babies. They see panic & anxiety when a new mom is scared. They see fear when a stat c-section is called. They see peace when the mom has support from her family – bc not all new moms do. They see teenagers giving birth. They see an addicted mom give birth to a baby who is withdrawing. They see CPS come. They see funeral homes come. Did you know that they have to make arrangements for the funeral home to come pick up the baby? I didn’t either.”

McIntyre ended her post voicing her appreciation for her sister and all the other nurses who work hard.

“You are SPECIAL. you bless your patients & their families more than you will ever know. Thank you for all that you do,” she wrote.

Photo of exhausted nurse goes viral: ‘Can we just give it up for nurses for a minute?’

MANILA, Philippines — Health workers’ groups warned on Friday that the government’s health programs are bound to falter if it fails to address the “health crisis” besetting the country.

In addition to outbreaks of infectious diseases, the groups said the health sector remains grossly underfunded with hospitals still understaffed and personnel still underpaid.

Maristela Abenojar, president of the Filipino Nurses United, said that one of the culprits is the onerous practice of contractualization, especially in government hospitals.

Nurses are no longer willing to work in the country’s hospitals because, aside from being unprotected by law, they are also overworked and underpaid, Abenojar said.

Abroad or different industry

Quoting a study done by the Philippine Nurses Association in 2017, Abenojar said there are 31,396 nurses working in 800 public hospitals, 35,365 in 1,172 private hospitals, and 23,547 in community health centers.

She noted, though, that the majority of registered nurses are either abroad (around 150,000) or working in other industries, such as call centers (roughly 30,000).

Recent Department of Health (DOH) data also showed that the country’s health care worker-to-population ratio is less than half the standard of the World Health Organization (WHO).

The WHO recommends that there should at least be 45 health workers for every 10,000 persons. But in the Philippines, the ratio is at only 19 per 10,000.

“Why did we come to this situation? Because there’s a lack of plantilla positions. Understaffing persists. There is no shortage of nurses. There is only a need to improve their working conditions,” Abenojar said.

12 hours of work

As a result, the Alliance of Health Workers (AHS) said those who remain in hospitals are forced to work at least 12 hours just to ensure that patients are cared for.

However, AHS president Robert Mendoza complained that health workers compensation remained at the range of P18,000 to P21,000 despite the additional workload.

“Health workers have been unhealthy and uncared for despite [sometimes] enduring 16 hours of duty. We have seen a historical increase in the number of contractual health workers receiving floor wages without security of tenure, few or absent benefits but with huge workloads,” Mendoza said.

The realities in the health sector, Abenojar said, should make the government rethink its priorities because the situation is nothing short of a crisis.

“There are a lot of DOH programs that will not be implemented properly if there’s not enough personnel. That alone should already make the government think about its priorities, that this is an urgent and vital matter that should be addressed,” she said.

Recently, several lawmakers raised concerns over cuts made in the DOH’s and Philippine General Hospital’s (PGH) 2020 budget amid a surge of infectious diseases and a health care program that is still unproven.

Budget cuts

Although administration lawmakers promised to restore the budget cuts, the All UP Workers Union-Mania (AUPWU) argued a 2020 budget without cuts would still be way off the P10 billion it needs to “render quality health care for all its patients.”

AUPWU president Eliseo Estropigan said the PGH’s operating requirement is currently at P5 billion but its budget for 2019 is only at P3.2 billion.

For 2020, the Department of Budget and Management only programmed P2.8 billion for the country’s premier tertiary hospital.

In the general appropriation bill sent to the Senate, the House of Representatives added only P200 million for the PGH.

Estropigan said a P10-billion budget would allow the PGH “to hire more nurses, health workers, provide free medicines for indigent patients, [and] purchase respirators and other life-saving medical equipment.”

Philippines in midst of ‘health care crisis’

Multiple steps must be completed before a nurse can safely enter the profession. These steps typically include:

Graduating from a recognized nursing program,

Meeting the specific requirements of the state board of nursing, and

Passing the National Council of State Boards of Nursing (NCSBN) NCLEX® examination for registered nurses (RNs) or licensed practical/vocational nurses (LPN/VNs).

Because passing the NCLEX is usually the final step in the nurse licensure process, the number of people passing the NCLEX (“pass rate”) is a good indicator of how many new nurses are entering the profession in the U.S.

These tables provide the most recent data on the NCLEX testing volume and the associated pass rates. In addition, NCSBN has listed the top five countries where nurses were educated outside the U.S. and who are taking the NCLEX examination in hopes of obtaining nursing employment in the U.S.