Regulates Nursing Practice in the Philippines

Board of Examiners composition and role

Section 2 establishes the Board of Examiners for Nurses composed of a chairman and two members, appointed by the President of the Philippines upon the recommendation of the Commissioner of Civil Service.
Section 2 requires that appointees come from among registered nurses of recognized standing in the Philippines certified by the officially recognized national association of nurses in the Philippines, and that they possess the qualifications in Section 4.
Section 3 vests the Board with authority to issue, suspend, revoke, or reissue certificates of registration for the practice of nursing.
Section 3 directs the Board to study conditions affecting nursing education and the nursing profession, to maintain an efficient ethical, technical, moral and professional standard in nursing practice.
Section 3 requires the Board to study and examine facilities of hospitals or universities seeking permission to open new schools or colleges of nursing or departments of nursing education, including compliance with essential requirements such as qualified faculty and adequate budget.
Section 3 provides that authorization to open nursing schools or colleges is based on the Board’s written recommendation and the recommendation/participation of the representative of the Government entity concerned with granting school permits or authorization.
Section 3 grants investigative authority, including issuance (under the chairman’s hand and the Board’s seal) of summons, subpoena, or subpoena duces tecum, and compulsion of attendance of violators and witnesses.
Section 3 allows the Board to recommend or adopt measures necessary for the advancement of the profession and the vigorous enforcement of the Act.

Qualifications, terms, removal, and administration

Section 4 requires Board members to be citizens and residents of the Philippines at the time of appointment.
Section 4 requires Board members to be registered nurses holding a Bachelor of Nursing, Bachelor of Science in Nursing, or its equivalent, conferred by a reputable and legally constituted school, college, or university with either nursing education or public health nursing as major study.
Section 4 requires Board members to be at least thirty years of age and to have had at least ten years of successful practice prior to appointment.
Section 4 prohibits Board members from being faculty of any school/college/university where undergraduate nursing is taught, during the one year immediately preceding appointment, and from having any pecuniary interest (directly or indirectly) in such institution.
Section 5 sets Board members’ term at three years, or until successors are appointed and duly qualified.
Section 5 provides a transitional stagger: the first Board has one member for one year, one member for two years, and one member for three years.
Section 5 states vacancies are filled only for the unexpired portion of the term.
Section 5 requires Board members to qualify by taking the proper oath of office before performing duties.
Section 6 designates the Commissioner of Civil Service as Executive Officer of the Board.
Section 6 provides that the Secretary of the Boards of Examiners appointed under Republic Act No. 546 shall also be Secretary of the Board of Examiners for Nurses, and that Board records and minutes (including examination papers) are kept by the Bureau of Civil Service under the Secretary’s direct custody.
Section 7 sets compensation at a fee not exceeding ten pesos per capita of the candidates examined.
Section 8 authorizes the President to remove a Board member recommended for removal by the Commissioner of Civil Service for continued neglect of duty, incompetency, commission or toleration of irregularities in examinations, or unprofessional or dishonorable conduct, after providing the member an opportunity to defend in a proper administrative investigation.
Section 9 empowers the Board to promulgate rules and regulations necessary to carry out the Act, subject to approval of the President.
Section 10 requires the Board to submit an annual report to the President after each fiscal year, detailing proceedings and recommendations.

Nursing schools and education requirements

Section 11 requires that schools and colleges of nursing be established to prepare qualified applicants for the profession of nursing and be operated as educational institutions.
Section 12 requires provision of an adequate budget and adequate library, classrooms, and teaching equipment and supplies.
Section 13 prohibits any hospital, college, or university from operating a nursing school/college unless provision is made for at least one hundred beds available at all times for occupation by medical (including communicable), surgical, obstetric and pediatric patients.
Section 13 requires provision for students’ experience in public health nursing with community health agencies.
Section 13 requires colleges or universities offering courses to nurses-graduates of the three-year hospital course to provide additional student experience either in hospitals or in public health nursing, depending on major study.
Section 14 requires the director or dean of the nursing school/college to be a qualified nurse with minimum qualifications: a bachelor’s degree in nursing (nursing education major), at least three years of acceptable experience in teaching and supervision in nursing schools/colleges, registered nurse status, and Filipino citizen status.
Section 14 requires instructors in nursing arts and clinical nursing courses to be registered nurses with minimum qualifications: bachelor’s degree in nursing, major in the particular subject(s) taught, and at least one year acceptable experience as head nurses in a hospital.
Section 14 requires the public health nursing instructor to have a bachelor’s degree in nursing (major in public health nursing), at least six months acceptable experience in generalized public health nursing, and be a registered nurse.
Section 15 requires applicants for hospital school of nursing to show completion of at least one year of college work in a recognized educational institution, with courses including Chemistry, Zoology, English, Spanish, Psychology, Social Science and Sociology.
Section 15 allows individual schools and colleges of nursing to set additional entrance requirements and allows offering the listed courses in four years integrated programs in colleges of nursing.

When nursing practice is allowed

Section 16 provides that, unless exempt from registration, no person shall practice or offer to practice nursing in the Philippines as defined by the Act without holding a valid certificate of registration issued by the Board.
Section 16 provides an exception for life protection and health promotion: any person practicing or offering to practice professional nursing must submit evidence of qualification for such practice and must be licensed as later provided in the Act.
Section 17 defines professional nursing as practice for a fee, salary, or other reward, or compensation involving professional services requiring understanding of nursing principles and application of nursing procedures and techniques based on biological, physical and social sciences.
Section 17 includes undertaking responsible supervision of a patient requiring skill in observation of symptoms and reaction, causes and effects.
Section 17 includes engaging as a nursing instructor in schools and colleges of nursing.
Section 17 excludes from the definition: students in nursing schools/colleges performing nursing services under supervision of their nursing instructors/professors, and exchange professors of nursing.

Nursing examinations and admission rules

Section 18 requires that examinations for candidates desiring to practice nursing be given on the last Monday of April and October of each year in Manila, or at other places the Board deems necessary and expedient, subject to approval of the Commissioner of Civil Service and the President of the Philippines.
Section 19 requires, except as otherwise permitted under the Act, that all applicants for registration must undergo the examination provided by the Act.
Section 20 requires an applicant for the nurse examination to establish satisfaction of the Board of the following qualifications at the time of filing the application:
- Philippine citizenship, or being a foreigner, with reciprocity where the foreigner’s country permits Filipino nurses to practice within its territorial limits on the same basis; and requirements for admission to nursing school and graduation as a nurse in that country are substantially the same as those under the Act.
- Age of at least twenty-one years.
- Good health and good moral character.
- Completion of a standard academic high school course or its equivalent in a legally established and duly recognized school/institute/college/university.
- Receipt of a diploma as graduate in nursing, bachelor of nursing, or bachelor of science in nursing from an accredited, legally constituted institution where required branches are taught, including specified medical, nursing and allied arts, and humanities subjects.
Section 21 provides that the examination consists of a written test whose scope is determined and prescribed by the Board considering teaching plans in all legally constituted Philippine schools.
Section 21 requires the Board to prepare and schedule examination subjects, including:
- medical nursing, surgical nursing, obstetrical nursing, nursing of children, communicable disease nursing, public health nursing, professional adjustments, nutrition and diet therapy, and general nursing procedures, and to integrate specified subjects: anatomy and physiology, microbiology, mental health, pharmacology and therapeutics, introduction to nursing arts, English and social foundations of nursing.
Section 21 requires the Board to submit the examination schedule to the President of the Philippines for approval through the Commissioner of Civil Service, and to publish the approved schedule at least two months before the examination date where it will be used.
Section 21 requires any alteration or amendment to the schedule to also be approved by the President of the Philippines.
Section 22 sets passing rules:
- To pass the first examination, a candidate must obtain a general rating of seventy-five per cent in the written test, with no rating below sixty per cent in any subject.
- If a candidate fails the first examination but obtains seventy-five per cent in each of at least five subjects, the candidate may take a second examination on the subjects where the examinee obtained below seventy-five per cent within one year from the first examination date.
- To pass the second examination, the candidate must obtain seventy-five per cent in each of the repeated subjects.
- If the candidate fails again in the set of subjects repeated in the second examination, the candidate must take re-examination on all subjects within one year from the second re-examination date.
- If the candidate still fails this second re-examination, the candidate must pursue a prescribed course of study and show proof of completion before admission to a fourth examination.
Section 23 requires the Board to report examination ratings within one hundred twenty days after the examination to the Commissioner of Civil Service, who with recommendation submits the ratings to the President for approval.

Certificates, reciprocity, and fees

Section 24 provides that certificates of registration shall be issued to applicants who pass after approval of ratings by the President of the Philippines, and upon payment of required fees.
Section 24 requires each certificate to bear the registrant’s full name, a serial number, signatures of Board members, attestation by the Board Secretary, and authentication by the official seal of the Board.
Section 24 provides that issuance of a certificate is evidence that the person named is entitled to all rights and privileges of a registered nurse until the certificate is revoked temporarily or cancelled for just cause.
Section 25 authorizes issuance of a certificate of registration without examination to nurses registered under the laws of any foreign state or country, provided:
- registration/licensing requirements in that foreign state are substantially the same as those required and contemplated by the Act; and
- the laws of the foreign state grant the same privileges to registered nurses in the Philippines on the same basis as those subjects or citizens of that foreign state.
Section 26 sets fees:
- Thirty pesos examination fee for applicants for nursing examination.
- Ten pesos registration fee for successful applicants.
Section 27 obligates the Board to refuse issuance of a certificate to any person convicted by a court of competent jurisdiction of any criminal offense involving moral turpitude, and to any person guilty of immoral or dishonorable conduct.
Section 27 requires the Board to give the applicant a written statement setting forth the reasons, and requires incorporation of that statement into Board records.
Section 28 empowers the Board to revoke or suspend a nurse’s certificate for causes in Section 27 and for unprofessional conduct, malpractice, incompetency, or serious ignorance or negligence in practice, including when obtained through fraud, deceit or false statements to obtain a certificate.
Section 29 provides that the Board may, for reasons of equity and justice and upon proper application, issue another copy (original or duplicate) of a certificate upon payment of ten pesos.
Section 29 provides that a replacement certificate for a certificate lost, destroyed or mutilated may be issued subject to Board rules and upon payment of ten pesos.

Prohibitions and penalties for violations

Section 30 makes it a misdemeanor to practice nursing in the Philippines without a certificate of registration issued under the Act, or without having been declared exempt from examination and registration.
Section 30 penalizes presenting or using another person’s certificate as one’s own.
Section 30 penalizes giving false or forged evidence to the Board to obtain a certificate.
Section 30 penalizes using a revoked or suspended certificate.
Section 30 penalizes assuming, using or advertising as a registered nurse, and penalizes appending R.N. or B.S.N. to one’s name without having been conferred the title or degree in a legally constituted school, college, university, or authorized board of examiners.
Section 30 penalizes advertising any title or description tending to convey the impression of being a nurse, including using nurses’ uniform and cap without holding a valid certificate of registration.
Section 30 penalizes any violation of provisions of the Act.
Section 30 provides punishment upon conviction: a fine of not less than one thousand pesos nor more than five thousand pesos, or imprisonment of not less than one year nor than five years, or both, in the discretion of the court.
Section 31 requires all duly constituted officers of the law of the National Government and of provincial, city, or municipal governments to enforce the Act and prosecute violators.

Schools opening authority and regulatory power

Section 3 makes the Board’s written recommendation a basis for authorization to open nursing schools, colleges, or nursing education departments, together with the representative of the government entity concerned with school permits or authorization.
Section 9 authorizes the Board to promulgate implementing rules and regulations necessary to carry out the Act, subject to Presidential approval.

Repeal and separability effects

Section 32 repeals all laws, parts of laws, orders, ordinances, or regulations in conflict with the Act as they pertain to nursing education and practice.
Section 33 sets the effectivity of the Act as upon its approval (approved June 19, 1953).