How does a Filipino doctor make money?

By going overseas to work as a nurse.

Right now it is estimated that about 6,000 doctors in the Philippines are studying to become nurses so they can find higher-paying jobs abroad.

According to the Philippines’ health ministry, this was up from 2,000 doctors who studied to become nurses the previous year.

A doctor working in a government hospital in the Philippines earns only about C$500 a month.

Overseas, a Filipino doctor could earn around C$8,000 dollars a month while working as nurse.

The doctors are not alone. Local media reports say lawyers, accountants and engineers in the Philippines are also enrolling to train as nurses.

The exodus of these professionals from the Philippines is the product of an economy that believes in exporting its trained workforce so they can send money home to boost the national coffers.

If you think the number of doctor turn nurses exported by the Philippine is staggering, take a look at the number of trained nurses fleeing their homeland to support their families back home.

Over 40,000 nurses take the National Licensure exam yearly in the Philippines. A shocking 15,000 nurses leave each year to seek jobs overseas. 

The economy of the Philippines is kept afloat by these trained professionals and about 8 million other Filipinos abroad who remitted over US10 billion dollars home last year alone.

Few countries depend so greatly on sending their people overseas for their economic well being.

The Philippines under the dictator Ferdinand Marcos actively promoted the exportation of his country men and women when rising oil prices caused a boom in contract migrant labor in the Middle East.

Successive administrations plagued by corruption and political upheaval have done little to reverse the outflow of Filipinos other than creating controls to regulate this export, which bleeds the Southeast Asian nation of its best.

While supporters of Philippines migration and remittance policy say the “controlled system” has raised the income of millions of Filipino workers and their families, there seems to be little accounting for the grave social costs associated with this economic strategy.

The overworked and underpaid fall prey to crooks as they desperately seek better paying jobs abroad, as is the case with the recent nursing exam scandal in the Philippines.

The extended absence of parents has deprived tens of thousands of Filipino children to grow up without the guidance of dad and mum.

Many of the migrants who go abroad do not put their skills to work at home upon their return, but merely wait for their next tour of work overseas.

A significant number of female migrants become victims of traffickers and are forced into the sex industry, a testament to the human rights problems that Filipino migrants continue to face.

There is no doubt that this policy has raised the incomes of a number of Filipino families but it has done little to fix the fundamental problems in the Philippines or create jobs at home.

Philippines, long known as the sick man of Southeast Asia, has to realize that the nation’s most powerful and valuable assets are its people.

But if it keeps pushing its people overseas to find a decent wage, the country is only going to get sicker.