DPH hires 21 new nurses for hospital

The Department of Public Health has hired 21 new nurses to add to its roster of nurses serving at the Commonwealth Health Center.

DPH Secretary Joseph Kevin P. Villagomez said the Public Health Office has hired more nurses—mostly from the Philippines. Villagomez said the 21 new nurses joined 91 others whose contracts had just been renewed earlier this month.

Villagomez said that only three nurses “opted to leave the hospital,” adding that these three nurses have gone on to greener pastures in the U.S. mainland.

With the entry of the new nurses, he said there is no shortage of nurses at the hospital right now.

Villagomez said the retention rate for nurses right now is at 96 percent, with most of the nurses coming from off-island.

He said his office is working closely to monitor its nursing staff and support them so they would stay and continue serving the CNMI.

He earlier admitted that there is not enough pool from the CNMI to hire nurses, thus the DPH Human Resource Division still recruits from off-island.

Villagomez said he is keen to absorb graduates of the two-year nursing program at the Northern Marianas College but would still wait for the passage of a House bill authorizing the hiring of alien graduates from the program.

Senate Bill 15-58 is now with the Governor’s Office as both the Senate and House have already passed it. The bill proposes that foreign graduates of NMC’s nursing program may be hired in the Commonwealth without prior work experience.

Both houses of the Legislature have passed the bill waiving the two-year experience requirement for nonresident workers who have obtained nursing education at the CNMI’s only government-run college.

Authored by Sen. Jude Hofschneider, the bill seeks to address the shortage of nurses at the CHC while reducing recruitment costs for DPH.

Several nonresidents are enrolled in, or have graduated from, the NMC Nursing Program. But because of their alien status, they cannot be hired by the government hospital unless they have two years’ work experience in nursing.

Villagomez said if the bill is signed into law, NMC Nursing program graduates would be hired as nursing assistants, nursing technicians or any position at entry level in the hospital, until they pass the national certification exam, for them to be hired as Registered Nurses for the Commonwealth.